


Six Ways From Sunday

by lenarakahn



Category: Original Work
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Bathing/Washing, Caning, Collars, Corruption, Dark Magician Noncons Virgin Priest, Decadent Court - Freeform, Forced Exhibitionism, Forced Masturbation, Forced to Beg for Rape, Forced to beg for orgasm, Forced to enjoy it, Foreigner in a society where public use is normalized, Humiliation, Inexperienced Victim Who Doesn't Know What They're Consenting To, Kinky Butlers, M/M, Magical Artifacts, Multi, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Priest Kink, Public Groping, Public Humiliation, Public Use, Rape to Claim Ownership of Victim, Raping a Virgin, Ravishment Fantasy, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Submission to rape as part of duty/job, Temptation, Treat, Victim is unable to remove hidden vibrator, Virginity or Celibacy Kink, and Several Naked Statues, handjobs, unwanted arousal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-16
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-12-02 23:33:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 6
Words: 23,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11519835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lenarakahn/pseuds/lenarakahn
Summary: When a young, earnest priest from the monastery of the Lady of the Golden Moon is hired as a tutor in the house of a rich aristocrat, depravity beyond his wildest imaginings awaits him.





	1. Lord Valbright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IdMonster](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IdMonster/gifts).



> I don't know what happened. This was supposed to be 3,000-4,000 or so words of "virgin priest gets ravished," and here we are 20,000 words later. I hope you like it, IdMonster! Your letter was fantastic and very inspiring. :D
> 
> There are no vampires, incubi, or demons (the Bad Men Doing Bad Things to the likes of Liam in the tagset) in this fic, but because this is a treat I thought it might be OK to fudge it a little. 
> 
> Thank you to Adytum and the Captain (you know who you are) for handholding, cheerleading, and porn mechanics. You are rockstars. (Porny, porny rockstars.)

Liam stood on the doorstep of the great house and nervously tugged his collar away from his neck. He shifted his battered leather satchel to his left hand, then had to stretch a cramp out of his right before lifting the great bronze lion's-head knocker. The case contained all such worldly goods as he might truthfully call his own, and the strap was narrow. 

His eyes darted once more to the elaborate topiary and flower gardens lining the drive. At least two of the statues he had stepped past were naked, and the iron gates were wrought in a monogram taller than his bare head. Should he have worn a hat? He was not at all certain of what was expected of him by his new employer. He had never been a tutor before. And at such a house! 

_At least they are not...magical,_ he tried to reassure himself. _Surely His Reverence would have said so?_ He recalled less of the precise wording of his interview with the abbot yesterday morning than he remembered the strong sense that he must not let the Scholars--and by extension, the Lady of the Golden Moon--down. Such a place as this, wallowing in riches but sadly untouched by her holy light and mercy, would hold many terrible and unspecified temptations for an earnest young man who had spent the second dozen of his years behind the high grey walls of the monastic academy. So far Liam had not seen any signs of dark magics, though the naked statues were a little concerning. 

He held a faint hope that he might, in such a grand dwelling, have an entire small room to himself, but he had not dared to ask His Reverence if he thought such a thing was likely. It seemed the sort of query that would lead to questions in reply such as, "What is it you wish to do at night in the dark with no witnesses?" He only meant to keep a light on a little late so that he might read, but those sorts of suspicions were not the impression he wished to leave behind him. 

It was on this note that the door swung open, and Liam had a sudden horror that the sharp-faced butler glaring down at him could read the echoes of _things done alone at night_ on his face. He could feel himself go red. He swallowed and straightened his shoulders, but the imperious way the man looked him up and down made his practiced introduction die in his throat. 

The butler's eyes flicked to the crossed green leaves pinned to the lapel of Liam's second-hand suit. He was angular and poker-faced, but no more than middle-aged. Perhaps he'd been in his position as long as Liam had been with the Scholars. He sniffed. "The holy governor, is it?" 

Liam stammered something of an affirmative. No one had ever called him holy before, and besides, the man's tone of voice had been anything but reverent.

"His lordship wants you in his study immediately," the butler continued. There was something odd about the way he said it, but then Liam had no idea how anyone here was supposed to speak. The man beckoned peremptorily and stalked back into the house. 

"Should I--" he began, trailing after the butler. Again the words died unspoken. He was standing in a vast front hall, the ceiling arching two full stories above the marble-tiled floor. Dozens of doors opened off the echoing space, and a balcony ran around all four sides, leading to even more rooms above. Everything was gilt and gloss, from the brilliant white gold-capped columns supporting the balcony to the rich carvings on each door and pedestal to the masterful, lifelike painting that spanned the ceiling. Nudes again, he thought distantly, and found himself staring straight up into a huge crystal chandelier. It was unlit--afternoon sun streamed in from the stained-glass skylights above--but at night it would throw the frolicking figures overhead into sharp relief. What was that man _doing_ with the woman clutching the rose to her bare--?

"Leave your case." The butler's voice jerked him back to his senses. "Come along. You'll soon learn, his lordship does not like to be kept waiting." 

Liam set his case down in a corner and followed, gawking, up a wide marble staircase and along the balcony. His footsteps echoed hollowly on the polished hardwood floors. Every bit of trim was buffed to a bright shine and fresh flowers sat in small alcoves, but he saw no one and heard no voices from behind any of the heavy wooden doors. He shivered, wondering how many people lived here, how many silent servants might be ghosting around the great dwelling at this very moment, perhaps marking his progress in some way unknown to him. 

His guide rapped at one of the doors, fourth or fifth from the end. "The young man from the Scholars of the Golden Lady, your lordship," he murmured. Liam gulped, not sure what he was supposed to do next. Before he could dither for more than an instant, the butler put his hand between his shoulder blades and propelled him into the room. The door snicked shut behind him. 

It was a study, the packed bookshelves and the solid mahogany desk made that clear. A bust of some ancient ancestor glowered up from a corner of the desk; a row of shiny pens and a wickedly sharp-looking letter opener were strewn across its surface. The man behind the desk must be his new employer, Lord Nathaniel Valbright. He stood with his back to the room, gazing out over the gardens, a deep charcoal morning coat stretched across broad shoulders and tapering to a trim waist and a--Liam swallowed. He cast his eyes back up, but all he could see of Lord Valbright's face was the extremely fashionable cut of his short midnight black hair. 

He cleared his throat. "S-sir?" 

"'Your lordship.'" Valbright's voice was a deep, velvety purr. He turned slowly, giving Liam plenty of time to appreciate that interrupting him might have been inexcusably rude. He had a well-formed face, a firm jawline, and piercing grey eyes under sculpted black brows. His lips were full and sensuous, but looked as if they were more often twisted in a mocking sneer or curled in ruthless command than curved in a smile. "You will call me 'your lordship,' holy scholar, and you will do me the _gracious kindness_ of lowering yourself to not speak until spoken to, in my presence." He paused, and tilted his head, gaze sweeping Liam from worn, painstakingly-shined shoes to cold-scrubbed cheeks and damp ash brown hair. "Your name?"

"L-Liam, your lordship." Liam could feel his pulse pounding in his throat, as if he were once again eleven winters old on the doorstep of the monastery. His life was in this man's hands, he suddenly felt, as surely as it had been in the kindly gate warden's.

"Only children have one name." Valbright's lips bent disdainfully, and his eyes flicked over Liam once more. "And you are no child, Holy Liam." 

Liam flushed. He had never been the object of such frank assessment before. He had bathed chastely naked with the other acolytes and not felt so exposed as this, Valbright's mere glance and faint innuendo enough to send a surge of formless shame through him. He squared his shoulders. "Fourth Scholar Liam of the Third House of the Lady's bright face," he said. "Your lordship." 

Valbright's smile grew. "Proud, half-educated, and painfully naive," he said. "You'll do very nicely." He came around the side of the desk and cocked his hip against it, folding his arms across his cream-and-silver patterned waistcoat. His trousers outlined powerful thighs, or so Liam's peripheral vision insisted on informing him. He stared straight ahead as Valbright spoke. "You are here for the education of my nephew, Frederic, and my ward, Nyna. I suppose you've some training in the usual secular disciplines, geography and history and mathematics and so forth, as well as your esoteric claptrap about the Goddesses?" 

"The Goddess." Liam snapped his teeth shut, but the words had already escaped. 

Valbright's eyebrows went up, and his smile became even more predatory. "There are two moons, exalted fourth scholar. Novel celestial cartography, to go with your unique naming conventions?" 

Liam felt slightly light-headed, but he straightened his spine for confidence and clasped his hands behind his back. He was on solid theological ground, here, and he knew it. "There is but one Goddess, your lordship. The dual moons are but...aspects...o-of her face, to show that she is always with us. The heresy of two goddesses, sundered from one another, was first proposed by--" 

"'Aspects.'" Yes, Valbright's lips were well-trained in mockery. "A simpering euphemism. You mean breasts." 

Liam's mouth dropped open. Never in all his life--

"Her full, round, luscious breasts." He made a blasphemously lewd gesture with his hands, outlining an extravagant divine endowment. Liam was quite sure he was meant to envision them naked, too. "Golden, your sect calls them. Rising at night, as a man's staff does, and drawing the tides like a--well. A virgin like you would be ignorant of the wetness of a woman's cunny."

The words burned into Liam's ears, filth and insult and vile heresy. Oh, how could he stand here and allow the Lady's name to be smeared this way? He had always kept himself pure. He was dimly aware that some of the other boys, less devout, allowed themselves whispers about the shape of women and...and other things of which he was not entirely sure. He had felt that...rising...of which Valbright spoke, but he had never allowed the hands that wrote the Lady's words to defile themselves by inflaming--by touching-- 

"Your masters jerk themselves to your Lady's tits all the time, no matter what they tell you in their holy sermons," Valbright continued. 

"No--" It was a squeak of denial, as humiliating as the way Liam's body was responding to the depraved words that fell from Valbright's cruelly sensual lips. No mere _rising_ of the nether regions at night, this was a dark, terrible heat, roiling in his belly and twisting itself amidst his horror at the obscenity, like the tentacles of some wild beast. _It must be magic,_ he whimpered inside. _Dark magic, as I feared!_

"Oh yes. They've written books on the subject, holy Liam, in extravagant detail. I have several in this very room. The remarkable fantasies of men made celibate...ahh. There's nothing like it for sheer erotic zeal. Though not precisely great accuracy." He glanced from the bookshelf back to Liam's tormented face. "And you, who cannot even bring yourself to say the word 'breasts'? Well, I did call you naive." 

He had never been ashamed to be pure, before. He did not wish to know these things! But the disdain on Valbright's face made him want to protest that he did _so_ know what breasts were, and that it was not ignorance or foolishness that guided his theology. Yet he could not accuse Lord Valbright of lies, in his very first hour in his employ, and honesty drove him to admit that he knew exceeding little about...this. 

And that he was painfully hard. 

Valbright made a gesture as if brushing away everything he had said in the last few shocking moments. "In any case, I prefer the legend of the _two_ Goddesses." He stood up and strolled to the bookcase. Bending down, he plucked a small golden statue from a lower shelf, then handed it to Liam. As Liam's hands closed instinctively around the base, he said, "Don't worry, holy boy. Your 'heresy' is just as much fun as your orthodoxy." 

Naked. They were naked. Liam held in his hands a very explicit, very detailed statue of two buxom young women, stark naked, entwined in a more intimate way than he had known was possible.

He dropped the statue with a clang. 

He stood staring for one frozen second, then scrambled after it, one knee on Valbright's plush carpet and the other pressed painfully to the strip of hardwood flooring by the door. Then Valbright was on him. Iron-hard hands grabbed him by the arm and the collar and wrenched him to his feet, wrapped around his neck, and slammed him with bone-jarring force into the bookcase. 

_He does read,_ he thought irrelevantly, _There's no dust,_ and then the hand around his neck cut off his wind. Valbright shook him bodily, and his eyes bored into Liam's from mere inches away. "Idiot," he snarled. Menace blossomed in his deep vibrant voice, like rich tooled leather sliding away from a cruel dagger. Liam struggled, hands tearing frantically at the vice-like grip around his throat, but Valbright just watched him with a terrible light in his eyes. His nails dug into Liam's skin, and he was close enough to kiss, his scent mingling with the lack of oxygen to make Liam utterly dazed. 

Then he let him go, and Liam recognized the look in his eyes. A cat, playing with a mouse. He had not meant to murder him, but oh, he had enjoyed Liam's terror. 

"Please," Liam gasped, throat raw, and Valbright slapped him across the face with the back of his hand. 

"Self-important little lackey," he hissed. "I let you interrupt me once. _Once._ For my patience you call me a liar and treat my possessions as if they are beneath you. You blithering little hypocrite." The hard line of his body was a furnace against Liam's skin through his shabby suit. The hand that had been around Liam's neck reached down and grabbed the bulge of his mortifying erection and squeezed. "Tell me," he growled as Liam sucked in a whimper, "tell me the truth, holy Liam. You've touched yourself to your fellow priests in your dingy little garret, haven't you?" 

"No!" He was shamed, humiliated, his body betraying him with every breath, but he would not lie.

"Fallen to your knees and sucked your masters' cocks at prayers? Emptied your balls by the light of the moon, imagining your great Goddess's breasts sliding up and down your shaft?" 

Liam's hips bucked into Valbright's tight grasp against his will. His eyes were rolling in his skull. "Never," he gasped. "Never, your lordship, I--I have been faithful! This body belongs to the Lady and the Lady alone!" 

There was a deep, wicked chuckle and Valbright's other hand moved from Liam's chest to the fastenings of his poor, strained trousers. "Do you mean to tell me," he murmured roughly, mouth hot as it brushed Liam's ear, "that these are the first hands that have touched you? Answer carefully." 

Liam didn't know what he was asking, or why the note of triumph in Valbright's voice frightened him so. "I--" Warm, strong fingers wrapped around his engorged flesh, and every last word flew out of his mind. "Oh--ohhh--no, please, no, your lordship--" 

Valbright grabbed his chin and forced him to meet his gaze. "Pretty little thing like you, maddeningly arrogant, nice cock and sinful lips--yet you swear yourself a virgin? Untouched, untaken, this prick as fresh as the day you were born?" 

"Yes!" It was a relief, to have some solid point to cling to in this flood of raging lust that tore through him with such power that only Valbright's unwanted embrace kept him on his feet. "I swear by every h-holy saint, my lord, by all the stars--" 

Valbright shifted against him and Liam could feel his lordship's own erection against his hip. It felt huge, and Liam could not help but wonder what it would look like if Valbright stepped back far enough so he could see. What he might see if the man exposed himself--oh, he was lost, lost. 

"Your lordship, please! You must not--"

And Valbright laughed. His hand sped on Liam's aching cock. " _I must not?_ You don't learn, do you? I own you. Every inch of your pretty flushed face, every stuttering denial, every twitch of this stiff cock. I _must_ do nothing but my own will, within my own house." 

"Your lordship, I beg you!" His body was not his own, just as the man above him said. His blood thundered in his veins and his prick thrust wildly into Valbright's unrelenting hand. His sanity flew from him. He was nothing but a creature of raw licentiousness, greedy for this debasement. His back arched and he grit out one final plea between his teeth, thighs trembling under him, prick straining lewdly. "Please, no, stop--I beg you--!" 

"Oh, no." That voice must be the undoing of every decent man and woman. "Not now, my enticing slattern-scholar. You will beg me for far worse than this. Spend yourself, holy little Liam, like the _virtuous slut you are_." 

The world convulsed. Liam's muscles went rigid and a surging torrent of pleasure roared through him, hot, divine, such bliss that a man might give days of penance for it. This might be the face of the Goddess, it might be darkest devilry, and for one eternal moment Liam cared not. He cried out and clutched desperately at the arms of his violator. 

When he came to himself, he stood propped against a bookcase in a room full of wealth, his prick and balls still exposed and his shirt rucked up. The leaves pinned to his breast, signifiers of his station, were torn half away, and his face was wet with tears. And dark, powerful Lord Valbright was still touching him. His fingers played lightly over Liam's softening genitals, arranging them as he pleased, tucking his underclothes beneath his balls so that every sticky inch of his private nakedness was displayed like a delicacy on a platter. 

He noticed Liam stirring. "And how did you like that, holy scholar?" 

Shame lanced through Liam from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. He tried to bring his hands down to cover himself, and found that he could not--they stayed gripping the edge of the shelf behind him no matter how he strained. With a sick sense of dread, Liam's eyes snapped to his lordship's face. "What have you done to me?" 

Valbright shrugged, an elegant, careless movement belied by the triumphant glitter in his grey eyes. "I've taken you at your word. This would not be possible if you'd pleased yourself with some other before entering my service." He flicked a casual gesture at Liam's exposed cock and balls, as if they were some lecture aid and not an indignity that was making Liam squirm. "Had you been false when you protested your virginity, these would have shriveled where they lie. Hardly of use to me." 

"Magic--my lord, no," Liam started. _Of further use? Valbright planned to do this again?_

"You waste your breath. Do so, if you wish. It can be rather entertaining." In the moment before Valbright turned and paced toward his desk, Liam glanced down and swallowed hard. His new master's fitted trousers did little to conceal the tremendous erection he still sported. Yet the man had not touched himself, nor rubbed his proud staff against Liam's trembling body. 

He might do anything. Liam's heart pounded. "You would not leave me here, your lordship!" 

A brief smile flickered on Valbright's face. "And what if I wish to? But no. Just this." He reached into a drawer and pulled out a small ivory pot, into which he dipped his first two fingers. They came away covered in a shimmer of gold. He strode back to Liam and parted his collar with his free hand. "Swear as you did upon your innocence, my pet. Did you take pleasure in my touch?" 

Liam hung balanced on a knife point. He must not lie. But the truth--the appalling, depraved truth--oh, the Lady must turn her face from him. 

He looked up into his master's haughty smile, opened his lips, and with flaming cheeks said the filthiest thing he ever had. "Yes." 

"'Yes, your lordship,'" Valbright repeated. 

The hand holding Liam's collar open might choke him again, for all Liam knew. He gulped. "Yes, your lordship." To his horror, he felt his cock begin again to stir. 

Valbright's hand flashed out and drew a sharp line across Liam's throat. He tensed, expecting pain and breathlessness, but it didn't come. Instead, he felt a cool, smooth weight settle around his neck, resting against his collarbones. A collar with the weight of gold, a finger's width or so tall, seamless, and manifested wholly from Valbright's magics. 

"It binds you to this house," his lordship said. "All within will know who--and what--you are." He stepped back and dusted his hands together. Liam's arms fell to his sides, freed. He did not know whether to pry at the collar around his neck or jerk his spoiled trousers closed, tried both, and made a hash of all of it. Valbright settled behind his desk and made a dismissive motion as Liam struggled to fasten his trousers over his prick, which had swollen impudently with the imposition of the collar. "I think this has been a good interview, don't you?" 

As Liam stared at him, the door to the study opened and the butler appeared again. _Summoned as if by magic,_ Liam thought, and shuddered. It might be the truth. 

"Thank you, Banks. Show the new tutor to his rooms," Valbright said, and with that Liam was back out on the bright balcony. The clock chimed the hour, as if it had been only twenty minutes and not a hundred years since he had stepped into his lordship's lair.


	2. His Nephew

Past the great doors lining the balcony and down the marble staircase Liam followed the butler's lead, head spinning. Before he could retrieve his satchel from beside the front door, Banks tucked it under his own arm and struck out across the vast open hall, leaving Liam to keep pace if he wanted to see his belongings again. The luxurious space and opulent furnishings of the great house still seemed fantastical and strange, but Liam's attention was torn from them by even more disquieting feelings. He could not stop thinking of what had taken place behind Valbright's door. Surely it must show on his countenance. Surely there must be some outward mark of the chaos in his mind, some sign declaring him unclean, wanton, perverted. 

He came to a startled stop at the far end of the hall before a great statue nearly ten feet tall. Worked with lifelike skill in warm golden stone, it was a woman in the full flower of sensuality. The statue itself was naked. Worse, someone had draped it in real cloth. The bright red silk cascaded over one shoulder, only to leave one breast entirely exposed and cup so little of the other that it could not be said to conceal anything. The stiff point of the covered nipple drew Liam's eye, lasciviously carnal, and he knew that his straining trousers at least must show how debased he had become. Then he saw her hand, dipping between her thighs, fine fingers posed much as those of Valbright's heretical goddesses. The red silk covered most of her voluptuous thighs and pooled in lush, sensual folds at her feet, but there was no doubt what the sculptor had intended. 

Liam did not know if the helpless sound which tore its way from his throat distressed him more, or the thought that this was such a house that a woman pleasuring herself might be brazenly portrayed, larger than life, where all that passed must see. Were they so jaded that this did not stir them? Or so depraved that they sought out such lewdness with every waking moment? 

The butler's shoes sounded on the marble floor behind him. "Stop gawking. I've no time for it. Much good you've done the afternoon's agenda, working him up like that. Now he'll want my mouth before tea, and I've other things to arrange." He snapped his fingers in front of Liam's nose. "Move, or I'll leave you to rub yourself on her and find your own way to your quarters." 

Liam's face flamed. He choked back a protest that such things were the furthest from his mind. It would make him look even more ridiculous than he already did, with his clothes disarrayed and one button already lost from his trouser fastenings. Were he to wander these halls like this unattended, the state he was in must shock even these dissolute hedonists. 

_What would they do to you if they found you?_ said a small voice in the back of his head, and he could not entirely suppress the shudder that ran through him. Drawing a deep breath, he turned and marched stiffly after Banks's retreating form. 

His quarters, when they found them in the maze of narrower hallways past the great hall, were beyond anything he had expected. He supposed they were small compared what Valbright was used to. But he had not just one whole room to himself, but two. The first was a small vestibule panelled in dark wood, with wall hooks and a boot-rack and a table and two chairs--two! as if he might have a guest some day. Through a connecting door was a sleeping room; he could see a bed covered in a colourful quilt, and light from what must be a window. 

Banks set his satchel down beside the boot-rack and frowned at him. His sharp eyes raked over Liam's state of dishabille with far less heat, but more judgement, than Valbright had. "You'll need a bath. Have you clean clothes?"

Liam ducked his head. "Yes, sir." He caught the _your lordship_ before it could slip out. Banks outranked him, it seemed, but he was not his master. 

The butler sniffed. "Well. In worse repair than what you've got on, I suppose, but they'll cover you till the tailor can be sent for. What we'll do for dinner I don't know." He sighed. "Down this hall, three doors, turn left, and across the courtyard. The baths. Put something on that doesn't reek. Then present yourself there." And without a backward glance he was gone. 

Liam looked around his receiving chamber-- _two chairs_ \--slipped off his shoes, and padded into the bedroom. There was a window, framed in blue curtains and opening out onto the courtyard Banks had mentioned. Flowers bloomed in a riot below the window frame, and there was a wide expanse of grass, crossed by cobbled paths leading to a farther wing of the house. The sun left a patch of warmth and brightness on a carpet less shabby than anything the monastery owned. If these were servants' quarters--and he wasn't quite sure what his position was here, yet--this household did not starve and beat them, at least. 

He turned toward the bedstead and and startled at the sight of a thin young man staring back at him. A mirror, tall and oval, framed in smooth dark wood. He looked...

He reached out a hand and leaned heavily on the bed. He looked utterly filthy. Had he walked through the entire great house like this? The least of it was the crumpled shirt, the disarranged lapels, the lost scholar-leaves. His colour was high, his eyes wide, his lips red and bitten, and the imprint of Valbright's hand was pink across one cheek. His shirt collar was open two or three buttons further than he had realized, and the magic collar gleamed at the base of his neck. And his trousers--they were clasped by a single button, and a great damp patch bloomed across the groin, where his traitorous prick thrust itself forward. 

His hand crept across his chest in mesmerized wonder, and without thinking, he ran his fingertips across the dark wet spot at the front of his trousers. 

"Oh--!" His knees gave out. He slid to the floor, meaning to snatch his hand away from his cock but succeeding only in grinding his palm against himself. "Oh--Lady--" 

The moment made the cry blasphemous, and he groaned. He who had broken his vows, how dare he call upon her now? Not content to break them under duress--perhaps she might have mercy, oh, he devoutly wished it--here he was defiling himself again of his own volition. Truly Banks might imagine that he was so far gone as to grind himself against the curves of a carven woman, there on the floor in the public hall. But it would be such relief, to press his hand a little harder, to trace the swollen outline of his sinful flesh through the wet, stained wool. With a stab of mingled guilt and arousal he recalled the blissful spasm Valbright's cruel hands had induced, and his hand twitched on that last button, to tear it from its threads and free his stiffening shaft. 

A breeze fluttered through the window and caressed his overheated face. It ripped him from his wicked imaginings for an instant, and he jerked his hand from his prick as if from hot steel. No. No. He must not--the window was open. The thought saved him, even as shame curled again in his belly. The window, the curtains, were open, and he must not display himself to those walking past. 

He buried his head in his hands, and let out a single sob. He stayed like that for a long moment, sunlight and cool breezes filling the bright, quiet little chamber, the carpet soft under his knees, his body wrung out and sore as if he'd run all the way from His Reverence's office. 

Then he pulled himself to his feet, dashed water from his eyes, and took a deep breath. 

A small sliding door in the corner proved to lead to a water closet just big enough for him to turn around in. He splashed water on his face, elected not to try to relieve himself in the state he was in, and then dragged his satchel from the entranceway onto the bed. 

Reverently, he dug out the few books he owned. The room had no bookcase, but the cheap pine bedside table had a lower shelf, and he propped his treasures there. The severe cover of Sarling's _Obedience and Perfection_ drew a grimace, different from the familiar reminder of poverty that was _Mathematics for Youth, Volume 3_ (volumes one and two having been snatched by readers more prompt to last spring's book fair than he). Four small blue notebooks bound in false leather held his journals, and after a moment he tucked them behind his more official tomes, such as they were. Out of the way of a curious maid's eyes, he hoped. 

His fingers brushed the worn green boards of _Thy Graciousness Is Everlasting_ , and he turned it over slowly in his hand. It was a perfectly orthodox set of devotional verses, though written by one Alys, a pseudonymous member of the all-female sister-order to the Scholars, rather than by one of their own mystics. Yet Liam had never quite felt free to display it openly among the rest of his meagre possessions, tucking it instead beneath his mattress or at the bottom of his clothes-box. It had not been new when it came to him. He flipped open the cover and traced the brief inscription-- _To Dai, in steadfastness_ \--and wondered again who the other young acolyte had been, if he had even been an acolyte, and why he had left the book behind. 

_Graciousness_ and Canon Nallin's history of popular religion on Zarith went next to the mathematics text, and Liam turned back to the satchel. He set his shaving case aside and rummaged through his clothing: three shirts, two pairs of trousers, one knee-length sleeping shift, and several sets of white-bleached but comfortably soft smallclothes. 

He frowned, and counted again. There _ought_ to be two pairs of trousers: the lighter grey linen pair for daily wear, and the stiff black trousers, slightly too small, for formal occasions. He had considered wearing this latter pair today, and winced now at the thought of what would have become of them. They were also the only trousers in his satchel. He turned it upside down, shook it out, and came up with the same result. 

He forced his mind back from the rabbiting trail it sought, where and when he might have misplaced the grey linen, or if the Scholars' laundry had been careless, or--no. He had no time for that. Banks had said that there would be a tailor, so presumably he would not be left bottomless forever. But he was required to attend the baths--an excellent idea, he had to admit--and it rather limited his options. He looked down at himself, where the bold erection Valbright seemed to have induced with his collar still distended the brown wool, though somewhat less now that he had ceased to touch it. This was his choice: the formal black trousers, what he stood up in (in several senses of the word), and...well, perhaps the nightshirt? He discarded that thought before it formed. Too much the lost, vulnerable child, that would be.

Liam held up the black trousers dubiously. They had fit several summers ago, but now... He would not be able to fasten them just now, in any case. And he would probably smudge them in this filth if he tried. 

He sighed, took off his suit coat, and stood before the mirror. If he tucked in his shirt and held the jacket over his arm when he walked...it might serve, just barely. 

He folded his remaining clothing, vainly searching them again for signs of the departed trousers, and stowed them in the drawers beneath the bed. Then, with a last backward glance at his little haven, he ventured forth in search of the baths. 

Banks's directions were simple enough, and he attained the courtyard with little difficulty. Once out of doors, however, he faltered. Other people were making use of the space. Two maids went by with high stacks of towels, murmuring to each other. He caught a glimpse of gold around one of their necks, and his hand flew to his own collar. He dropped it quickly, face flushing; he'd raised his concealing jacket. Ducking his head, he made for the far side of the square, eyeing a pair of muscled young men hefting some sort of complex equipment in his peripheral vision. 

Thus it was that he missed the slam of the door to his left and the shlump of footsteps across the grass, and collided vigorously with a gaudy blue waistcoat and the very sturdy dandy thereunder.

Liam went flying, skidding across the grass on his backside. He squinted up at an excessively tall young man--or maybe that was just Liam's current position--blond, bluff, bedecked in the height of masculine fashion, and scowling down at him from narrowed blue eyes. 

The dandy stalked forward and his eyes fixed on Liam's disreputable sprawl. Far too late Liam wrenched his arm out from under himself and dragged his coat across his lap, but his adversary's face had already twisted from affront to disgust. "Who in the nine torments let _you_ in here?" 

"I--" Liam gulped and tried to sit up, heart thudding. 

"Shut up. Are we screwing beggars off the street, now?" The silver-topped cane in the young man's hand prodded Liam's calf. "You must have a hell of a great hole if Nat's taken to pronging charity cases." 

Liam's whole body burned with mortification. He wasn't sure of the precise meaning of some of those words, but the sense of them was very clear. _I'm the new tutor_ seemed likely to only worsen this disastrous encounter. He wiped a grass-stained hand across his brow and swallowed hard. "I-I'm, Lord Valbright accepted my services today. I'm from the Scholars of the Golden Lady." 

The young man leered, his eyes lighting with unholy interest. "Are you, eh." He took another step forward and dragged the tip of his cane up the inner side of Liam's knee. "You'd think a monk would know his place, instead of barging around getting spunk all over my gambling gear." 

"I'm sorry, sir, I--" 

The cane slid slowly up his inner thigh, coming to rest against his balls, and Liam froze. The young master laughed. "Sorry? Penitent? Get up." He nudged, and Liam scrambled to his feet, the much-abused jacket falling to the ground. 

He bent to pick it up, and the cane rapped him soundly across his upturned buttocks. He staggered, dropped the coat again. 

"Leave it. Turn around." 

Liam steadied himself, twisted around, and glared up at the young man. "What gives you the right--?" 

It was the wrong thing to say. If he hadn't been so frayed already he would have kept his mouth shut. The young master grabbed him by the shirtfront and ran one smooth finger across his golden collar. "This does, you insolent slut." 

The moment strange fingers touched the metal, Liam's prick jerked in his pants. He stared in horror. "I'm not a--" But he was, wasn't he? He'd let Valbright do such terrible things to him already. He'd nearly touched himself with innocent young maids only yards away. 

The cane slid up between his thighs again, and Liam held his breath. The man's face twisted. "Get these rags off." A breath. "Now, pervert." 

Liam looked around in terror. The maids were nowhere in sight, nor were the serving men. None to see his shame but this mocking bastard who might well rip his garments from him if he refused. But at any moment, they might return, and he did not think they would help him. 

His fingers trembled on his shirt buttons, and after two false starts the wrinkled once-white fabric fell to the ground beside the coat. He pried his shoes awkwardly from his feet, hardly daring to take his eyes from his tormentor's face. Then, with a final humiliated shudder, he opened his trouser fronts. The remaining button tore free at last, spinning away to clatter against the stones of the path. He would face the shame all at once, he thought, and prised his trousers and smalls from his hips together. 

"Well." A smirk was back on the young master's face. He eyed Liam's naked body voraciously, gaze skating past the golden collar and settling on his tight nipples, then raking down his belly to rest on his raging prick. He took the cane and lifted Liam's bobbing shaft out of the way, making every show of inspecting his balls as if he were some animal on the auction block. The cane slid lewdly between Liam's thighs, leaving him in no doubt what else its owner might like to put there. 

Then he stalked around behind him, with a sharp pinch to Liam's bare ass when Liam began to turn to follow him. "Well, well, well." He stroked the collar again, this time just at the nape of Liam's neck, and made an amused sound at the full-body shiver it provoked. "Under the rags, it's a nice tight body. Could use some fattening up, but--" He pinched Liam's ass again, and Liam stumbled a step forward. 

"Wh--" _What are you going to do to me?_ Liam thought, and bit his tongue savagely instead. 

His captor seemed to understand him nonetheless. "Dispatch these, first." There was a complicated gesture at the edge of Liam's sight, and his sorry heap of clothing burst into flame. 

"You can't--!" He was naked in the middle of what suddenly seemed a huge yard, with windows all around and the chance of more strangers at any moment. His only wearable clothing was now nothing but a soggy patch of ash, and he would have to walk completely nude and rock hard through the house and grounds to find anything else. 

The young man's breath was harsh on the back of his neck. "Shut. The fuck up." He shoved Liam in the small of his back. "Walk." 

Liam shuffled forward, grateful for the soft grass under his feet. He dared not look behind him, nor to either side. Anyone in the household might see him, bared to the world, swollen prick on display as if he would fuck all comers. Valbright himself might be gazing out of a window right now. Banks's voice echoed in his head, _The master wants my mouth,_ and Liam's feverish mind produced a hazy image of the neat, crisp butler on his knees, sucking on Valbright's great stiff shaft, while Valbright watched Liam's disgrace and murmured things like _my dirty, holy scholar_. 

He was forced across the courtyard to one of the pillars at the far side. The shame in his belly matched the throbbing in his balls, both deepening at the memory of Valbright's touch and the musk of his body. The scent of the boy behind him was harsher, mixed with some artificial cologne, but the sweat on his hands as he jerked Liam to a stop and made him bend forward was real enough.

"Five, for insulting a master of this house, don't you think?" The voice behind him would have been a lazy drawl if not for the quickened breath. "Another two for backchat. I suppose his lordship would have _me_ caned if I whipped your balls. Pity." 

The words jerked Liam out of his filthy, frenzied fantasies, and he struggled violently against his tormentor's grip. Only it wasn't strong male hands holding him down anymore. Magic held him immobile, just as it had in Valbright's study. His hands were bound to the pillar in front of him with invisible cords, low enough from the ground that he was forced to bend over and thrust his buttocks out shamelessly. His feet were rooted to the ground, spread wide apart, leaving his balls to dangle free and his stiff, aching cock to rut against his belly. 

He had time for one panicked breath, and then the cane struck his ass with a vengeance. He howled. The hot sharp line burned across his buttocks, jerking his hips forward as if he truly were a rutting animal. He choked on air, and the next two stripes came down so fast it drove him up onto his toes. "Learn some _respect_ ," the young master hissed against Liam's sweating back. He pressed his full length against Liam's flushed skin as gravity pulled him back down onto his heels, grinding his clothed crotch into his hot, naked ass. 

Twice more the cane came down, once on the high, unmarked skin above the first stroke, and then where his cheeks met his thighs, sending him twisting and writhing in his invisible bonds. His cock bounced obscenely as his balls tried to crawl away. When his prick swung back on the rebound he could feel the slickness leaking from it, smearing across his tense, sweat-soaked belly. He sobbed, pain mixing with a torrid desperation he did not understand.

"Oh, you like that," the young master mocked, and struck him again in that same cruel spot. Liam's body convulsed. He clung to the pillar before him, tears running down his face unchecked. The searing lines across his ass drove tortured sobs from his throat, but if his hands had been free he would have jerked his jutting prick and not cared if His Reverence himself was watching. 

The last stroke flamed across his buttocks and the cane clattered across the tiles at the foot of the pillar. The young master's breath came fast on the back of his neck, and Liam could hear him wrestling with the fastenings of his trousers. His prick came free and Liam felt him press between his burning cheeks, sliding into the space between them and nudging against his trembling balls and the base of his cock. 

Liam gasped, drawing a desperate breath to fight him off, no matter how fruitless it would be. 

"Leave the boy alone." The voice was cool and quiet, and Liam's shaken wits couldn't place it for a long moment. Then he nearly collapsed in relief. 

It was Banks.


	3. The Butler

It was Banks. 

He had known the man for an hour, in which time he'd let Liam be touched and collared by his master, and then turned up his nose at the resulting ruin of his apparel, but right now he seemed an angel. 

"What's it to you?" The young man shoved off Liam's abused ass, and Liam panted against the pillar. There was the sound of clothing being adjusted, and a grunt as the young master hid his erection. Liam hoped it was uncomfortable as hell. "Just because you lap at his lordship's prick like a starveling dog--"

Liam's face was pressed to the stone, so he couldn't see Banks's face, but he could well imagine the sere dignity with which he must be drawing himself up. "Not only do I fellate Lord Valbright," he said primly, "but I am _contained_ by him, by magic as strong as that boy's collar. That state you have induced in the boy--and yourself--is impossible for me." 

Such words! So crude, yet couched in such fine language. Liam did not trust his brain or his ears, yet the thought persisted: _He can't get hard when he takes Valbright's cock? How is that possible?_ Shame curled at the edges of his mind, the logic following inexorably from his own inquiry. No holy man would be shocked at such purity of body. But Liam--it was Liam himself who trembled with desire at the thought of that member thrusting into Banks's mouth...into his own. He groaned softly. 

"So you see, I am no competition for you there." Banks drew a breath through his nose. "And your uncle allows for high spirits. Slap him silly if it pleases you, I'm sure. But, Master Frederic, you know he won't have you fuck him before he's had the chance." 

Everything else--even the _fuck him_ \--dimmed, and blackness swam before Liam's eyes. _Your uncle._ He would have curled away in shame if the magic bonds had let him. _This_ was Frederic? The boy he was meant to tutor? He had thought his new charges mere children, at worst spoilt hellions who might lob spitballs at him. But this--

An entirely new kind of shame flooded his guts, and the way his cock refused to bow to his distress made it ever the worse. There would be no respect from his pupils for him now. Not when he'd shambled into this finely dressed lordling, then been exposed to his view and shown for the insatiable pervert he was. He ached to pull his hands free from the pillar, to close his thighs and give his balls and prick even that little cover. 

"I was only going to rub--" Frederic sounded sulky now. Liam heard him pick up the cane, and kept his face turned away. 

"Well, I say slap him, but those marks..." Banks tsked. "You'll want to hope they fade with the bath-salves, young sir." 

Liam clenched his buttocks, embarrassed by this breezy discussion of his anatomy and the promise of intimately-applied salves, and the pain bloomed across his ass again. He breathed through it, praying that they'd let him go soon. It was almost a relief to focus on the pain, rather than how helplessly bared he was to them both. 

"Hmph." Definitely sulky, but he seemed to have taken the warning. Footsteps sounded on the paved portico beyond the pillar. Liam risked a glance. "I'm off, then. I've _this_ to take care of." Master Frederic cupped himself lewdly, eyes fixed on Banks in such a way as to emphasize that he was going to grant himself the sort of relief that was, apparently, obscurely denied the butler. 

If Banks took the insult, he didn't show it. He merely cocked an eyebrow, and Frederic reluctantly flourished two fingers in Liam's direction. The invisible bonds melted from Liam's hands and feet with startling suddenness, and he crumpled to the ground, barely hearing the tap of the young master's shoes as he strolled away. His heartbeat thumped dully in his ears as he lay on the crushed grass, and the wind made his sweat-grimed skin shiver. 

The butler's shadow fell across him, and Liam felt him crouch next to him, not without tugging up his tailored trousers first. "Well. He's done a job on you, all right," the man said. 

Liam sucked in air. "I didn't--I only--" 

He braced for a slap or a derisive word. But Banks only sighed. "He's not grown into his responsibilities yet, young Frederic. Sometimes the young ones think this is carte blanche to break their toys." He brushed a finger along Liam's collar, and Liam winced, but the potent surge of arousal that had come when Valbright and Frederic had done so failed to wash over him. Liam drew a shaky breath. "Ah," Banks said, and then, "It's in the blood, you know." 

Liam pushed himself up onto hands and knees. "Only some of them can...can make it..." He flushed, fully aware that his body showed exactly what they could make the collar do, but the words stuck in his throat. 

"Indeed. Like my own. But only his lordship can govern _that_." Banks pushed himself to his feet, leaving Liam danging from that cryptic declaration. "Come along," he said, and did not insult Liam by offering him a hand up, though part of Liam rather wished he had. 

He had not been caned in more than six years, and never with such passion. The masters at the Lady's academy felt a certain amount of corporal discipline salubrious to the soul, but they meted it out within judicious, seemly limits. Not like the delirious whippings he had heard went on in some other orders. No, it had been cool, sober, and soon done. 

And they had pulled down his smalls at most, he thought. He winced after Banks across the cool stone of the shaded portico and down a stone-flagged passage, too weary suddenly to care if anyone saw him now. Not as he would have cared had he been shamed like this before his fellow acolytes after some long-ago discipline. He could not imagine Brother Vestallan, who'd overseen those chastisements, speaking of whipping their balls or of rubbing himself between their thighs. 

The strength of Frederic's arm and the strength of his own...reaction...blurred. Long and hot and firm, stubborn, covetous, insistent... Liam turned a corner after Banks and had to lean heavily against the wall, breathing hard. No, wrong word. It was only that in the cool air his muscles had begun to stiffen so--no--that they _ached_ \--

The splash of water drew his head up. He had come, unawares, through another wing of the house and out into a wide, tiled space, where water ran unceasingly into a great shallow sunken pool. Ferns trailed from brass fixtures and the roof was open to the sky. There were benches near the walls where one might sit. And he knew of a sudden where the thick, fluffy towels the maids had been carrying had been destined for. 

Banks stood in water up to his knees. This morning Liam would have been startled, distressed even, to see that the water somehow left him dry, but now he only blinked and thought the magic must save on changes of clothing. He did not need to be ordered to join him, only slipped a little on the tiles as he tottered towards the pool, then flung himself down to his grass-stained knees in the waves. 

Oh, it was _warm_ , the water was warm. He nearly wept at its gentle caress. He ducked his head beneath the water and let it flow through his hair, scrubbing his palms across his burning eyes in the brief privacy it afforded him, until he must needs come up to breathe. He sucked in humid air and turned his face up to the sun, and when he finally opened his eyes the world had stopped spinning, a little. 

They were near the edge of the pool, and he could see that Banks had an array of bathing effects lined up along its lip. The use of the soap was obvious, the razor as well, but there were three or four other bottles and vials that set him at a loss until he remembered the promised salves for the cane-welts. 

He squeezed water out of his hair and reached determinedly for the soap. He could feel Banks watching him, so he turned his back and lathered up the violet-scented bar, watching the bubbles float away in the slowly-moving water to a drain somewhere at the far end of the pool. He soaped his chest and tried not to think of how much power a man must have who could afford baths such as these in his own house. The golden collar lay heavily across his throat. 

He had just finished scrubbing his thighs and was reaching for his private parts, which had subsided to a slightly more respectable state, when he felt the butler's hand close around his wrist. He hadn't heard him moving through the water. 

"I'm to see you properly cleansed," Banks said. There was a slight note of apology in his voice, but he didn't release his arm. 

"I can wash myself," Liam snapped. "I've done it for years." 

"Nevertheless." He took the soap from Liam's grip, somehow whisking it away even though Liam's fingers had tensed in a fist around it. He dropped it at the side of the pool, and in a moment a different scent filled the air. It made Liam think of warm summer evenings and the crisp crunch of fallen leaves in autumn, and distracted him for the instant Banks needed to slip his hand between his thighs and begin to wash him. 

He choked on a protest. Banks had been kind, so far. Would the man be punished if Liam didn't allow him to complete his task? And his hands were...polite...if such a thing could be said for a man soaping another's inner thighs with one hand while the other lay flat against his stomach, fingers pressed into the soft skin below his navel. 

He could feel the butler's suit against his back, and see the crisp cuffs as his wrists moved. After everything that had happened to him today, he half-expected a hard line of excited flesh to be pressed into his bruised ass, but there was nothing. He found himself shifting backward in bemusement, as if he might have missed it. 

Two things happened at once: Banks pressed him more firmly back against himself, and he reached for Liam's cock. Over Liam's involuntary squeak he murmured, "You did hear me speak to Master Frederic. The bond you wear--I wear another." The autumn-soap in his hand made it slick, and he stroked Liam's full length before returning to its base and beginning again. This time, he drew his fingertips down Liam's shaft in such a way that Liam began to imagine the slats of a fence, or the bars of a cage. "It is narrow," Banks continued. "Confined. I may not do as you do, alone at night, no matter what use his lordship puts me to in daylight." 

Liam braced his legs and forced himself not to thrust into that wet grip, or succumb to the seductive murmur in his ear. "I don't," he gulped, "at night, I never--" 

"So his lordship says." There was a touch of laughter in Banks's voice, as if to say, _So you say today._ His soap-slick fingers traced the fat head of Liam's cock and brushed the tight slit at its tip, and the jerk of Liam's hips was instinctual. It seemed as if that clever touch were inspecting every secret place, turning them all out into the sunshine to be _known_ by his deft fingers and efficient eyes. He squirmed. 

The hand pressing his buttocks against the narrow, confined bulge in Banks's trousers slipped down to stroke his balls, and Liam's eyes fell shut. He ought--he ought to resist. He ought to shove himself away from Valbright's enchanted retainer and scramble after the last of his dignity, but he seemed powerless to resist the sweet, snug slide of the butler's fist and the way his black sleeves shone stark against Liam's pale belly, as neat and clean as when he'd first opened his master's door. 

Banks was still speaking in that low, mellow tone. "But sometimes, the master allows me the pleasure of watching others spill their seed." The hand on Liam's cock tightened, the slow friction almost maddening, and he thrust into it as he had into Valbright's hand. He moaned, and tried to still himself. "Oh no," Banks murmured. "You _will_ spill for me. Your stones will tighten, your limbs will strain, and your lovely round buttocks will press against me as if--ah, yes!--before your splendid cock reaches its sublime release." Liam felt each sensation as it was described, was going taut and eager all over. Just this once, o Lady, just this once...

"But not yet." 

And Banks's hand slid to the end of its stroke and away--so suddenly that Liam stood there thrusting his prick into empty air, his mouth still forming silent pleas for a long blank moment before his mind caught up with his body. Hard on the heels of the awful sense of loss was the guilt, that he had taken such leave of chastity that he would have begged the man to make him come. The breath shuddered in his lungs as he tried to find gratitude for the reprieve, but met only the tight coil of need in his belly and an overwhelming urge to finish what Banks had started. 

He ought to push away, Liam thought wildly. He was of a height and build with Banks. He could do it easily. Defend himself. He was not trapped against a wall now. With one swift movement, he might--oh, curse this lassitude, why would his limbs not move? 

The hand cradling his balls tightened in subtle but clear warning. His complicity had doomed him, or perhaps the tension in his shoulders had revealed his vain hope of flight. Banks had not bound him--need not, with his wiry fingers enclosing Liam's sensitive sac. He almost wished that he _would_ bind him, demand this from him with force as Frederic and Valbright had. That the smooth fingers pitilessly caging his testicles should be so gentle was cruel beyond bearing. 

"Please, sir..." His fists clenched at his sides as the hoarse whisper tore its faithless way from his throat. He hoped Banks thought he was begging for his freedom, but he could not convince his conscience of the lie, not when his hips still made small abortive movements in search of some invisible hand upon his prick. His head fell back on Banks's shoulder with a broken, helpless moan. 

Banks murmured something Liam could not make out, his breath wet and warm on Liam's shoulder as he bent for something at the side of the pool. "Patience, boy." His voice, ever smooth and self-contained, held the very slightest edge of effort in it. He sounded as if he were reaching perhaps for a book on a high shelf, not suffering carnal restriction far beyond Liam's comprehension. Liam had merely been left hard and untouched for moments, and already he begged for relief. Was Banks a better man than he? No matter that he delivered young men to his master to be used, no matter that he held them by the balls to administer further perversions? 

The hand that had been stirring his manhood to such heights had not been idle. Banks shifted somewhat behind him, and cool, damp fingers spread across his bare ass. Liam stiffened, muscles drawing rigid from calves to neck. There was a scent of herbs this time, and a brief sting as salve was smeared over each of the wicked, hot lines left behind by Frederic's cane. It drew the fever from them, but seemed to displace it to the cheeks of his face, for he could not but remember the scent of the young master's arrogant body and the offhand way he and Banks had spoken of Liam's holes and hardness and naked buttocks. 

The mounds in question clenched at the memory of Frederic's heavy shaft between his spread thighs, and the two fingers working salve into the stripes at the top of his thighs moved lightning fast and pinched him cruelly on an un-healed bruise. Over his gasp of pain, the voice in his ear said, "Control yourself. You've practice, surely." 

He stood trembling, the image of himself exposed this way before his fellow dedicats rising again unbidden as the sharp discipline made his pulse pound. It ought to shame him, and yet--would they treat him like this? What would be his punishment in the order for the sins he had committed today? He did not even know the names for all of them. But surely...surely to be caned and left for the mockery of righteous men was all that he deserved. 

The butler's hands were firm and efficient, but they worked over every inch of both ass cheeks with meticulous care. When Liam thought he was done, Banks began again. By the time he drew his hand back at last, the pain was gone but Liam felt flayed in mind and soul. It did not help that, all the while, the hand on his balls had continued to roll and pet them gently, drawing tighter when he least expected it, and brushing over the tender skin behind and beside them. He swallowed his whimpers and tried to stay still, but he earned himself two more sharp pinches before Banks was done. 

With one final pat to his ass, Banks withdrew his hand, then splashed it in the water to rinse away the salve. Liam braved a glance down at himself, and was half-relieved to see that he had softened somewhat while his prick had so studiously been ignored. He might take a towel, now that he was done, and walk back to his tiny refuge. He longed to curl up in the bright soft quilt and close his eyes.

He took a half step forward, and the hand on his balls tightened like a vice. "Where are you going?" Banks murmured. "Have you forgotten? I said you would spend for me." 

Liam twisted his head around, but he couldn't properly see the man behind him. "Please don't," he said, proud of how little his voice shook. "I have my vows." Shattered though they were. 

"And I have my duty." It was not a tone that brooked disobedience. Liam nearly choked out _Yes, Your Reverence_ from sheer habit, then winced at how inappropriate that was. 

"Please," he tried again, but Banks only tugged his balls down, securing his grip without hurting him, but making it very clear what would happen if he tried to run. Then he heard a bottle open behind him again. Instead of the butler's other soap-slick hand returning to his prick, it brushed again against his ass. Not his salve-healed cheeks, but...between them. One finger explored the crevice and nudged against his hole. A strange tremor ran through him, and he would have bolted if not for the hand locked around his balls. "No...ohhh...!" 

He was cut off mid-protest by the ruthless finger pushing fully inside him, at the same instant as Banks released his balls and claimed his half-roused cock. The twin shocks strummed through him, jangling his nerves. The butler's left hand was as skilled on his shaft as his right, and he quickly had Liam rocking up onto his toes again, seeking the sweet, wet friction. At the same time Liam was pinioned in place by the stiff length up his ass. It was only a finger. It ought not feel as though he sat astride a hallowed wand or Master Frederic's cane, but he felt speared in place, hardly able to breathe. 

Banks's hand clenched on his shaft and the finger _moved_. He did not know what magic struck him then, but he cried out, lust surging as if his lordship had set his hand to the gold around his neck. Desire burned through him and he pressed himself back on the butler's hand, shoved his prick into his relentless fingers, all while he panted "No, no, no, no," and ached with the most obscene unspoken pleas Lord Valbright could ever have devised. 

Water splashed about his knees and sunlight warmed his closed eyes as he threw his head back, his thin frame at last surrendered to the sensations wrung from its most intimate depths. He sucked in air, and felt Banks's thigh pressed behind his own, the only sign of the butler's arousal the slight quickening of his breath. Lurid images painted themselves behind Liam's eyelids of being filled with more than fingers. There were two inside him now, and if he had thought himself hard when Valbright touched him, when he knelt in his ruined trousers, when the young master's cane had come down--

For the second time in as many hours he spilled into the hands of a stranger. It wrenched his breath from him, left him staggering, bent nearly double as his seed shot into the water. He found himself on his knees, still murmuring "No." He floundered, aftershocks making his belly clench, while Banks turned to tidy his salves and soaps. The wicked thought of undoing the butler's trousers and finding some way to service him, somehow, was still burning through his delirious mind when Banks stepped out of the pool. He was still dry from head to toe, and if not for his confessions Liam would never have guessed the inferno that must be building within him at this very moment. 

He was not given time to recover, but the towels were very soft. Banks allowed him the grace of drying himself now that he had been so thoroughly cleansed inside and out. Indeed, he might never be able to spend again, he thought, hiding his face in the towel as he rubbed at his hair. With a sigh, he wrapped the towel around his waist. 

"Ah, no." Banks had flicked the towel from his hips and was dropping it into a receptacle for other damp linens before Liam's clumsy hands could stop him. "These say here. There will be clothing in your quarters." 

"But I--" Liam began. _I do not want to be naked,_ he thought, and felt the more foolish for protesting to the man whose grip he could still feel on his cock. 

"Come along," Banks said again. He tucked the small case containing his soaps under his arm, and stalked away towards the courtyard again. In the fever of his lusts Liam had not paid enough attention before to know the way back on his own, so he must perforce follow him. He cupped his hands awkwardly around his bare genitals as he had not had the presence of mind to do on the way to the baths. 

There were people in the courtyard. He balked, and would have turned back, but Banks was immediately at his shoulder. He nodded towards the cluster of buxom maids in the shade of the portico, all of whom had looked up when Liam arrived and were staring with undisguised interest. "Those three," Banks said quietly, "Have all seen Master Frederic naked. The blonde one, they say, he likes to have bite him. And the workmen--" The two boys from before were back, wrestling with another complex frame of some kind. This time one was bared to the waist. "--with the brass horse. The tall one offers the maids a rogering when he can, and the other likes a sound thrashing." 

Liam blinked. 

"You've nothing they've not seen before," Banks concluded, and he stepped behind Liam and prodded him forward. 

It was not an especially comforting thought. Perhaps in a house like this, he was expected to stroll about confidently with his hands at his sides when he found himself naked in company, but Liam covered himself as well he might (which left his ass bare, but he need not watch them staring at his backside) and hobbled down the stone walk to his own wing of the house. 

Banks left him at the door to his quarters, walking away with his nose in the air and his hands clasped behind his back--doubtless to go minister to his lordship's needs.


	4. The Audience

The door latched shut behind him and he leaned back against it, all his fizzing energy draining out of him. There was a suit laid out on the bed as promised, he saw. A note was with it. _Adjusted from the last tutor,_ it said in a brisk scrawl that might be Banks, or some in-house tailor. He examined it and found no signs that it had been let out or taken in. Magic, then. Again. He hesitated for a moment, then hastily donned it when the wind brought the voice of one of the maids through his window. 

It fit him like a glove. In the mirror, a fair-haired young man of middling wealth and decent taste looked back at him, eyes red-rimmed and quizzical. His waistcoat--the first he had ever worn--was a sedate deep blue, and probably would remind no one but him of Master Frederic's gambling suit. He fingered the fine grey fabric of the coat where it was cut away at his hips, and thought with some apprehension that it would hide nothing at all were he to find himself in...straits...again. But surely he would have other clothing soon. Everyone else attached to the house seemed to be kept clothed, not paraded about half-naked like some dirty drawing. 

Then again...

He shook his head. They had muddled his wits. He glanced longingly at the bed. He was wrung out enough to sleep for days, but hunger stirred his belly and the sun was beginning to wester. And they might expect him at dinner, as a new addition to the staff. He sent up a brief prayer to the Lady for wisdom and courage, then wedged himself into the shiny new shoes he had been provided. They, too, fit perfectly. 

_No one measured me_ , he thought, as he stepped out cautiously into the hall. And then, crushing a near-hysterical giggle, _What else would you call Banks and his wandering hands?_

He found a page in the great front hall, who told him that dinner was in an hour and gave him directions to the dining hall. A second inquiry led him to the library, a satisfying trove of books as large as the monastery's, though weighted to somewhat different topics and furnished much more richly. He ran his finger along the single small shelf dedicated to works about his Lady, and the rather longer one about the Twin Goddesses. They had a copy of _Thy Graciousness_ , but it was near-mint condition, bound in red leather and gold. He let his hand pause on its spine for a moment before turning away. 

He was somewhat more profitably ensconced in the history section, turning slowly through a book of engravings on the court of Queen Lisette VII, when he heard steps in the hall and a low male voice. Carefully returning the book to where he had found it, he slipped towards the door. 

It was Valbright. He was resplendent in midnight black, his coat shot through with silver threads, cufflinks of diamond, and gems glittering on his fingers. He was even more startlingly handsome than he had been this afternoon, and the low light from the wall sconces seemed to make his skin glow golden. 

"Ah, Fourth Scholar. Just who I was looking for." His smile was perfectly pleasant, but Liam's eyes were drawn to the devastating twist at the corner of his lips, and he flushed to the roots of his hair. Valbright's smile deepened, and he looked him up and down. "I see they've put you in something half-decent. As _decent_ as a boy like you can ever get, I suppose." The glitter in his eyes might mean either sense of "decency," and Liam quashed the urge to flee. "Come out from behind that door, little scholar. There are people for you to meet." 

Reluctantly, Liam let the library door close behind him and stepped out into the hall. Valbright ran a hand possessively down his back from his shoulder to his ass, where he let it rest long enough that Liam had to duck his head and look away. Valbright chuckled. "Pretty thing. More entertaining than you know." 

Liam's throat had gone quite dry, and he had to swallow twice before he could squeak out a flustered "Your lordship." 

Valbright kept his hand at the small of Liam's back as he escorted him towards the dining room. In the great hall he marked how Liam's eyes turned instantly to the statue of the lady taking her pleasure. Valbright bent low and murmured in his ear. "Have you touched yourself to the Countess yet?" 

Liam shook his head in instant denial. He had not touched _himself_ , that he could say truthfully. And he had not thought of this lady's curves when Frederic and Banks had had their hands on him. In the evening glamour of the great chandelier, it suddenly seemed important to seem sophisticated. He swallowed. "You speak as if you know the lady, your lordship." 

Valbright's chuckle rumbled against Liam's skin, and somehow seemed to insinuate a number of awfully intimate things. "Oh, I know her quite well. The artist took a few small liberties, but I suppose he must have been distracted. She agreed to pose for him but only if he sketched her in the nude. While he was nude, that is." 

His hand had slid back up to Liam's shoulder, and for a moment Liam feared he would reach out and touch the golden collar. But all he did, as they paused in the doorway to the dining hall, was to give Liam an utterly filthy look and to say, "Countess Alessia would have eaten you for _breakfast_ , my pet." 

The effect was not so different than if he had stroked Liam's collar after all. Valbright left Liam standing in the doorway and strolled to the head of the table, stopping to clasp hands and exchange a jest or two with the others already present. _People for you to meet_ , he'd said, but this was more than one or two old friends. Perhaps a dozen people sat around a long broad table laden with china and cut glass and already groaning with food. Not just business associates, either. Gender seemed no bar to Valbright's table, nor did age, though none of them were greatly advanced in years. He saw Frederic in converse with another young lordling near Valbright's seat, and turned quickly before he could be spotted. A young woman in a dress as gauzy as a butterfly sat perched beside a stately noblewoman in a jade-green gown, nearly toppling into her lap. Liam might have done the same, for the way the noblewoman's neckline plunged and the rich carmine of her lips. 

Banks was there, stationed stoically behind his master's chair, and he signalled to Liam with a flick of his fingers. Gratefully, Liam sank into a chair about halfway down the gaudy table, across from a stout lord with silver hair and piercing blue eyes, who luckily glanced at him once and turned back to his conversation partner. 

It seemed his lordship had been the last to arrive. Conversation slowed as guests were served and began to eat. Beside Liam's plate, wine the colour of the jade-lady's red lips filled a glass so delicate he was afraid to touch it. His head spun enough without it; the lights were bright and the company gorgeous and effervescent. The food was like nothing he had ever tasted, small delicious salmon-cakes and sweet melon drizzled with sugar-glaze and a spicy soup that set his mouth afire, only to have it quenched by a cool iced dessert with flecks of real gold in its airy froth. Liam looked down at the silver fork clasped in his hand, which the monastery might have sold for enough money to fund its orphanage for a year, and felt quite beyond his depth. 

Just when he had begun to wonder if this dinner would continue through eternity, or at least past midnight, Valbright rose at the head of the table and tapped his glass for silence. The roar of conversation died down, with a last "--the one Nyna drove off, you know. No, Frederic didn't care for _that_ tutor at all, it was an entire failure..." from a lady two chairs to Liam's left. His ears burned. 

Valbright gave a little bow. He smiled expansively at his assembled guests. "It has been far too long since you've graced my table, friends. Opportunities have presented themselves far too rarely of late. I'd like to present to you a new discovery or two of mine, before the evening's entertainments. Miss Jeyanna, if you would?" 

Miss Jeyanna turned out to be the butterfly girl. She bent to give her patroness a kiss on the lips, then fluttered up to curtsy prettily to Valbright. She nodded and smiled to the guests, and at a sign from her mistress, spun into the first steps of a dance that had the filmy layers of her dress twirling out in streamers behind her. She did not, it seemed, wear much beneath them. A murmur went through the guests as she dipped into an impossibly flexible bend, then swayed upright again. 

"Very well done," Valbright murmured, and the girl returned to her seat. "Miss Jeyanna will perform again after dinner. And now, I'd like you to meet the latest addition to my...staff, a precocious young man who styles himself simply Liam, but who bears other names." Another ripple ran through the crowd. Liam looked up, jarred out of his fascination with the dancer's progress back to her lady. "Liam?" 

He blinked. Something seemed expected. He stood slowly, and realized Valbright wanted him to join him. With an apologetic smile for his neighbour, he squeezed out of his seat. 

"Liam comes to my household as a tutor from the house of the Golden Lady, where they do many good works." He settled his arm possessively around Liam's shoulders again. "No, not the lady there in my halls, about whom some of you are quite passionate." Laughter, and murmurs specifying the form of certain guests' fascination with the Countess Alessia and her statue. 

"The Golden Lady," Valbright continued, "sees us whatever we do, and prizes knowledge." Valbright's hand slid down Liam's back to grope his ass again as he spoke. This time he lifted the tails of Liam's coat and traced the snug trousers where they followed the curves of his buttocks. His thumb traced the same pattern between Liam's cheeks that his butler had before him, and Liam bit his tongue and strove to keep his face pleasant and open, as if his master were not feeling him up before company. "Or so they say. Liam--" He pressed two of his fingertips directly against Liam's hole, as if he meant to drive straight through the fabric of his trousers right there and then, and Liam dug the nails of his right hand into his own thigh. "Liam will, I'm sure, be an educational experience for us all." 

He dropped his hand, and smiled at Liam, and patted his shoulder. His thumb caught the collar of Liam's shirt, and Liam was halfway back to his seat before he realized that it hadn't been an accident. His master had set off the golden collar. 

He nearly fell into his seat, grateful for the drape of the tablecloth and the indifference of most of Valbright's friends. A servant came around with coffee and sweet, dense chocolate cakes cut into fanciful designs, and Liam tried to breathe slowly through his nose and ignore the rising lust in his blood. His fine shirt seemed to scrape against his suddenly-sensitive nipples when he reached for his fork. His trousers were horribly confining, and his collar--both of them--seemed too tight to properly draw breath. He shifted in his seat, fighting down mild panic, telling himself that he was not the sort of man to drop his hand to his lap and soothe a raging prick at dinner. No matter whose house he was in. 

_I must do nothing but what I will, in my own house._

He was sure Valbright meant him to thrash and moan and disgrace himself before his guests. He would not. He sipped his coffee and welcomed it when it scalded his tongue, for it disguised the wince when the motion of lifting the cup made his balance change and his trousers tangle more tightly around his rapidly-swelling cock. 

He nearly missed when Miss Jeyanna rose again and began to dance, and then he had to pretend a coughing fit so that he might cover his face and hide his groan. This was no merely sensual, girlish twirl, but a swiftly more erotic dance. Even without the collar he might have been in difficulties. As it was, he bit his lip and tore his eyes from her supple form, only to find himself staring into her mistress's generous cleavage. He grabbed his glass of water and cursed the magic collar. 

_It's only the collar,_ he told himself, _No worse than you have endured before. Only the collar,_ until he realized it wasn't. He was rocking slowly in his seat, and the press of fingers inside himself was not something he had imagined. It was there. Inside him. Filling him, growing harder and longer with every breath he took. He did not know how, but when Valbright had groped him in front of his guests, he had somehow set a magic shaft inside him. What did it look like? Was it as large as it felt? He knew with no evidence, but also no doubt, that it was made of gold, like his collar. But it felt indestructible. His lordship, claiming him from the inside out. The thought made him shiver.

His gasp drew a look from the woman beside him, and he gave a weak smile. He could--he must--endure this as well. Must show no sign. Must make Banks the butler his model. This terrible heat, this painful ache in his balls, all of it was in his mind. He thought of cool water and bare rooms and the driest texts he had ever studied. 

It almost worked, until the magic cock inside him began to pulse with a rhythm of its own. 

His hand jerked, forcing the silver handle of his fork painfully into his palm. He grit his teeth against the throbbing within him, which seemed to go on and on, undulating like a living thing. He could not even unclench his hand, only breath shallowly and keep his head down as if the decadent treat on his plate had arrested his attention. He hoped his neighbours were staring dreamily after Miss Jeyanna as they'd been a moment ago, for the tiniest of whimpers escaped his lips. The juddering magic inside him found the spot Banks had played so expertly in the bath--but if that had been sweet, this was near-ecstasy. It set his prick swelling even harder, and made his hands tingle. 

He wanted to writhe, to throw himself back in his chair and spread his legs and bring himself off. He wished desperately for his old pair of trousers, which had worn softly to his form over the years. These must have been designed by some sadist, or the magic measurement-taking must have gone amiss, for they contained him with bitter efficacy and their buttons showed no sign of giving way. He thought for a mad moment of flinging himself from his chair, claiming some food-borne indisposition, and fleeing for the safety of his small, quiet room. Or the baths, he might jump fully-clothed into the baths. The water must be cold by this time of night. Quenching, calming, soothing--

But when he glanced up, the silver-haired noble across from Liam was watching him, and the way his eyebrows twitched said he _knew_. Liam's face flamed. The prick inside him changed to a faster, rougher pulse, rolling hard against his sweet spot and then sinking deep inside him, and Liam's mouth fell open in a soundless cry. The fork clattered from his hand, and he saw the patrician's nose flare and his eyes sharpen as though he scented prey. The man made no sign, but those around them were beginning to take notice. A hand touched Liam's wrist just as the magic cock began its throbbing cycle again, and Liam moaned. It felt like a brand, and he wanted to scream at them to leave him in peace, or to strip him naked and touch him all over. 

A concerned feminine voice said, "Are you all right?" 

Liam sucked in air, unable to halt the thrust of his hips as his prick sought out the grossly inadequate friction of his court trousers. "I--" he gasped. "I--am only--" 

The girl beside him smiled, or he thought she did. He dared not meet her eyes. "It's the drink, isn't it. More than you're used to." 

He nodded stiffly, though he had not more than wet his lips with the wine. The shame of the lie added its small bite to the hooks of humiliation he felt would tear him apart. He might burst from this, simply spontaneously combust, and take the entire house with him. 

She patted his arm, and he nearly bit through his lip. What had Valbright _done_ to him? Or were the gold flecks in his dessert enchanted too? He risked a brief glance up from his plate, but no one else seemed affected. Some of them had loosened their collars or sat leaning against this friend or that in languid poses, and flushed cheeks and bright eyes showed their interest in Miss Jeyanna's erotic dance. But no one else was trembling with the effort to hold still, sweat beading their hairline, nails digging into their thighs in hopes the pain might distract them. 

The girl stopped touching him, but it was hardly a relief. The plug inside him seemed to have grown with his exertions, till it must be twice the size it had been when it began to vibrate. Three times the simple finger's width he had first noticed thrust inside him. He had one hand clenched on the edge of his chair, the other clawing at his thigh, mere inches from his own throbbing, hungry cock. He would not, he would _not_ \--

He yearned for the sweet, cool water in his glass, but he dared not attempt to reach for it. Little shocks ran through all his muscles and he could not trust that he would not drop the glass or knock it over onto his neighbour. And he would have to lean forward, and it seemed impossible to bend just that fraction of a degree and not turn it into the frantic rutting he craved even more than water on his parched throat. 

He looked up again, seeking desperately for something to focus on outside his treacherous body. His eyes landed on the grand lord across from him again, and the amused little smile on his face was nearly his undoing. The man had been watching him all this time. Had it been Valbright giving him that predatory look, Liam would have come untouched just from the quirk of his lips. As it was, he burned, imagining sliding on his knees under the table and mouthing at the man's cock, or sucking his fingers, or--or--he had no words for the desires setting him aflame. 

He tore his eyes away, and the next thing he saw was Miss Jeyanna. She had bent nearly to the floor and was swaying upright, her breasts spilling from her light, filmy bodice. She cupped them, watching the crowd from under glittering black lashes. Her hips rolled, and rolled, and rolled, drawing Liam's own to match their rhythm. His hand was moving, and he could not stop it. He pressed down hard over his tortured cock just as the shaft inside him began to thrust in time with Miss Jeyanna's hips. His heart thundered in his chest and she fucked him and fucked him and fucked him and fucked him--

He came with a small desperate cry, grinding his hand ruthlessly against his trapped cock. The pain only made his back arch and his toes curl in his stiff new shoes. The shaft inside him throbbed relentlessly, caring not that he lost his breath and his hearing, that his skin seemed scraped raw, or that any of them--all of them--might be watching. 

Someone began to applaud. The stiff cock filling him jerked once more, in time with the last spurts of Liam's own seed, and a chill swept up Liam's spine. His private torment had not been so private after all--they _had_ seen, they thought him _entertaining_ them--

The shame could not stop his hips from bucking as the last shocks of his orgasm faded. His prick was suddenly too tender to touch, and his limbs ached with the release of tension. But the craving was only banked, not sated, and he lay in a swoon across his chair, hips twitching in erratic jerks as Valbright's friends applauded his ignominy. 

It was not until several minutes had passed and the sounds of chairs scraping back and voices lifting in conversation began to fade that he realized they had probably been applauding Miss Jeyanne. 

He cracked open his eyes to find that he was alone. It was over. He pushed himself up from his chair and had to lean heavily on the table when the room swam suddenly. He gulped water and stared about the wreckage of the feast. It was over; he could retreat to lick his wounds, confess his sins to the Lady, and try to calm the need that still itched under his skin. 

As he moved toward the door, a figure melted out of the shadows. A hand came down on his shoulder, and Valbright's voice said in his ear, "So soon, holy Liam? But I've hardly touched you yet." 

Liam's tongue tangled around the words he wanted to spit in Valbright's face. _You touched me! Who else? That fat--that hard, thick--that_ thing _inside me is all your doing!_

Valbright spread his other hand across Liam's chest, catching the hot bud of his nipple with the edge of his palm, and Liam stumbled. "My, my," Valbright said in a voice like dark water, "So eager, after all that. It was a pretty show, my upright little scholar." His hand slid down Liam's body to grasp his cock, which was still just as upright as he said. "How you fought! A blushing lad pretending to virtue, when anyone who lays eyes on him can see the wanton cockslut he really is." 

"I'm not--your lordship--please--" But he was succumbing again, leaning into Valbright's touch. The shadowed corner Valbright had drawn him into seemed a separate world from the one of bright candlelight, one where hard pricks and strong hands might satisfy one another. He hid his face against Valbright's chest and ground into his hand. 

"Ahh." His master's hand drew back, brushing just the tips of his fingers against Liam's hardness, chuckling when Liam arched his back and sought more contact. "Not what? Not blushing? Not wanton?" He seized Liam's hand and forced it between his own thighs, trapping it against his thick, hard member. "Not _filled_ and _fucked_ and insatiable?" 

"M-my lord--" All he could think of was the heat and girth of the cock under his fingers, and the fat plug inside him, and how very, very close he was to finding out what the real one felt like. His eyes darted over Valbright's shoulder like a rabbit in a trap. The dining hall yawned empty behind them, but light leaked out from beneath the heavy tapestries against this wall. He heard voices beyond in the next room and stiffened in Valbright's embrace. 

The heat behind Valbright's eyes flickered. The hand on Liam's shoulder drifted up to brush a thumb across his swollen lower lip. Valbright purred into his ear. "Come, holy Liam. You must take brandy with us." And he pushed aside the tapestry. 

The guests had not left after all. Instead, they were scattered about this luxurious secret room in various states of repose. And undress. Miss Jeyanna sat astride her mistress's lap on a plush sofa, light skirts rucked up to bare her bottom; one breast, released from its constraints, was already marked with the lady's lip-rouge. Master Frederic lay sprawled in a chair, exposing himself to the room--and most especially to his friend, who knelt between his legs. As Liam watched, he grasped his friend's hair and pushed his prick into his waiting mouth. 

Banks, demure as ever, drifted among the revellers with a tray of drinks. Two maids assisted him; both were naked to the waist. One had full breasts and curving hips and wore the gold collar Liam had glimpsed this afternoon in the courtyard--and nothing else but stockings. The other had bent to set a glass beside the gentleman who'd taken such interest in Liam's predicament at dinner. Her skirt was more of a notion than a fact, and when she straightened Liam could see that gold glimmered at each nipple and from the thin chain that draped between them. He thought the gentleman only observing all the debauchery until he halted the maid with a tug at her nipple-chain and slipped two fingers up her cunny. 

Amongst such shocking exploits, Liam thought he might pass unmarked. But Valbright was still beside him. The arm around his shoulders caged him in; he was not going to be allowed to slink away to some hidden corner. Valbright dipped his head and sunk his teeth into the shell of Liam's ear, the grip on his shoulder tightening to bruising force when Liam went taut as a wire and tried to twist away. "That, for lying to me--chanting sweet innocence with your hand on your master's cock," he said. "This, for the last of your pretense." 

Almost idly he began to play with the hairs at the nape of Liam's neck. Then he brushed the golden collar with his forefinger, a long drawn-out contact that left Liam instantly throbbing. Before Liam could catch his breath, Valbright cupped his hand around his throat, covering half his collar, and the forced arousal spiked higher. The shaft inside him pulsed, sending his hips jolting forward and his hands clenching. 

"It's not pretense," he gasped. They might be the last words he would speak freely. Already his knees were beginning to buckle. "My lord, I have vows--" 

"You'll beg to break them," Valbright growled. His fingertip hovered over the collar, an instant from petting it a third time. "Tell me the truth, holy little cocktease. What should I do to you?"

Lust coiled in Liam's belly. He could barely think with the way the plug throbbed inside him and the way Valbright's hands burned. If he should touch the collar yet again-- _Make it stop,_ he thought, _Turn it off!_

He gripped Valbright's arm. The words tangled. "Take it off," he croaked. Valbright's smile went shark-like, and he lifted his hand from the golden collar. Horrified, Liam realized what he'd said. "No--I meant--" 

It was too late. Valbright ran one finger from his chest to his groin, and every stitch of clothing he wore vanished. At the same instant Liam realized they had the full attention of half a dozen guests. He tried to cover himself, but Valbright got there first, wrapping his fist around Liam's prick and stroking it long and tight. 

"Please, no--!" 

Valbright didn't answer him, just stroked him again. It was terrible, wicked, driving his cravings higher and forcing an obscene moan from his throat. Valbright was behind him now, turning him so his friends had a better view. And he was speaking, but not to Liam. "You're a connoisseur, Bentham. What do you think of this cock?" He dragged two fingers from the base of Liam's naked cock to the crown, the better to display it. Liam wanted to curl away in shame, but he knew there was no hope of leaving this room without being dragged back and subjected to worse. 

The older gentleman had the maid perched on his lap now. Whatever he was doing beneath her, she was wriggling most enthusiastically, her bosom and its golden chains bouncing. His fingertips swirled in her pubic hair like the statue of the Countess. He peered at Liam. "Rather nice. Though better seen in action. Certainly pretty enough to keep nude around my house. Are you selling?" " 

A ripple of laughter from the other guests. Liam's face flamed. The plug inside him chose that moment to change its rhythm to that deep rolling torment from dinnertime, and he threw his head back on Valbright's shoulder, hips thrusting rudely towards the crowd. Master Frederic snorted. "I agree with hizzoner," he drawled. "I've seen better." 

"That's not what he said, Freddie," the maid laughed. "And you liked it well enough this afternoon." 

"Oh?" There was something slightly dangerous about Valbright's tone. He reached up to pinch Liam's nipples, making him squirm for his guests. The thick line of his master's erection ground against his bare ass, and Liam could almost feel the stripes of Freddie's cane again. 

"Didn't get to play with it, did I?" Frederic said sourly. "Banks told me off, more's the pity." 

"So you left him untouched, Freddie?" Liam's nipples were tender and swollen by now, but Valbright kept at them. He glared at Freddie and twisted one of the delicate buds till tears sprang to Liam's eyes. "Nothing's been up him but the hard magic he's riding?"

"Ooooh," Bentham's maid said, and Banks cut in smoothly, "My finger in the bath, my lord. You wished to be sure he was clean." 

Valbright let Liam's nipple go, and started on the other one. Worse than the pain was the fact that his prick jumped each time Valbright touched him, whether it was pleasure or torment. And he'd taken his hand from Liam's cock, leaving it bared to everyone's eyes and horribly, horribly hard. 

"Remind me to whip your cock for that," Valbright said to Banks, and smacked Liam's hands away from his aching cock. Liam choked on a moan. 

It seemed terribly unjust, but Banks said, "Yes, your lordship," serene as if he'd been offered a cup of tea. Liam thought he saw a glitter in the man's eye like the one he'd had in the bath. 

"Well, Bentham's right." The jade-gowned lady spoke for the first time. "Shall we see how he functions, Nathaniel?"

They talked about him like he wasn't there. And this...this was no spat between a youth and a servant in a back corner. Here were lords and ladies devouring his naked body with their eyes, touching themselves, trading quips about the worth of his private parts. And he could do nothing--the fat cock in his ass, the collar's power, and the touch of Valbright's hands made him writhe and twist as if he actually craved this humiliation.

"Bring me a chair." Valbright was stroking over Liam's hips and belly now, leaving trails of fire behind but drawing no closer to the terrible need in his cock and balls. He hated the man in this moment as he had never hated anyone before, and he ground himself back desperately against Valbright's erection. _Fuck me. Touch me._

He was shoved down into a ladder-backed chair and the familiar grip of magical bonds took hold, spreading his legs to either side of the chair's. The shaft inside him swelled and he curled in on himself, only to discover that the magic cock had somehow fastened itself to the chair. He was pinned by the thick shaft up his ass, helpless as a worm on a hook, bound on full display for all of Valbright's curious friends. 

And Valbright left him there. His master sank into a deep leather chair just out of arm's reach, and looked him over. He made a lazy swirl through the air with his fingers, then stretched his legs out and unfastened his trousers. As Valbright's hard staff sprang free the stiff prick up Liam's ass surged forward, and he let out a broken moan. It was worse, so much worse, to both see his master's cock and feel it fucking him, and still not be able to touch it. 

"Well, holy scholar," Valbright said, giving himself a generous squeeze and driving the magic cock up Liam's hole. "Would you like to touch yourself?" 

Liam clenched his eyes shut. Against his will, his right hand strained to move towards his erection--and stopped. He made a fist of his left hand and tried to lift it, and got no more than an inch from the seat of the chair. With a stab of panic he tried again, and again. But his hands were bound to the chair as surely as his feet. 

Valbright was stroking himself lazily now, and Liam could _feel_ him inside him, the fat shaft swelling and prodding and _filling_ him. And he knew, oh so intimately, what his master's hand felt like on his own cock. He _ached_ for it. He ground down against the cock inside him, but it wasn't enough. He needed to be touched, touched _there_ , and he couldn't move his hands, and Valbright just looked at him with a self-satisfied smile. 

"He's got to _think_ about that one?" It was Freddie's friend, sprawled on the floor at Freddie's feet, teasing his own cock now that he was done with the one in his mouth. "Thought he was supposed to be smart." 

"Cock up his ass and a good demonstration, and he just sits there waving his willy," the girl who had asked after Liam's health at dinner put in. 

Miss Jeyanna murmured something about how she didn't even touch them herself, but she knew what they were _for_ , for the Lady's gracious sake. Her mistress slapped her bottom and she giggled. 

Liam was moaning now, too humiliated to look at any of them. All those years spent keeping his hands pure for the Lady, and now it came down to being mocked for _not_ touching himself, when he burned to break his vows--and couldn't. Valbright thrust his hips and Liam jolted in his bonds. His neglected prick bounced against his belly and Bentham drawled, "You'd think a monk would have heard of saying 'please.'"

"No..." It was the softest breath of a moan, and it took Liam a moment to realize it was his own voice. "Oh, Lady, no..." They were going to make him ask for it. 

He stared at Valbright, pleading with his eyes, but his master just raked his own gaze down Liam's trembling body and gave himself another languid stroke. He shifted his hips and the angle of the prick inside Liam changed, and Liam grit his teeth. _Please._ His lips shaped the word and he could feel it coiled in his throat, but to say it--to say it would make every filthy thing they said about him true. _A cocktease, a slut, a hole to fuck, a pretty nude to be sold, a pervert..._

"Tell me no again and I'll believe you," Valbright murmured. "You'll feel this, every day, my shaft inside you and your balls blue as you please. I'll let Freddie feel you up, let the grooms use your mouth. But _Banks_ will come before you do." 

Liam gasped. "H-how--"

"How long since you've come, Banks?" 

"Don't frighten the lad, sir." Banks had moved silently to stand behind his master's chair. "But at your last clemency...I'll say that Lady Nian's methods are _quite_ unpleasant." 

"P-please." It burst out of his throat. "Please, I'll do anything. Only let me touch myself. I--please, sir. Y-your lordship. I--" 

He was horrified at how foolish he sounded, how little like the man of wisdom he had hoped to be in this house. Naked, spread out for them, unable even to soothe his own base needs without another's command...

And his hand sprang free. He stared at it, dumbstruck, and then he was wrapping it around his swollen shaft with a grip like death. 

"Say 'thank you,'" Freddie's friend laughed, but Liam could only throw his head back and moan with pure relief. How had he not known what bliss this would be? His hips left the chair, thighs straining so hard as he thrust that the hard magic impaling him nearly slipped from his hole. He sobbed for breath as the need inside him drove higher and higher. So near the crest now, his balls tight and hot, every muscle tensed to the point of pain, but oh, oh, oh, just one moment more--

But instead of the glorious tumble over the edge of arousal into sweet release, he thrust into the air and there was nothing but more need. He felt the moment when Valbright came, the stiff magic cock swelling impossibly thick within him. But no matter how he tried, now matter how his belly clenched and his toes curled and his hand chafed his aching prick, he could not follow suit. 

_Only let me touch myself,_ he'd begged. And there was a difference between touch and release, wasn't there? His master had said it--he might be groped for endless days and not be made to come. Tears leaked from his eyes. But he couldn't stop his hand in its furious stroking or his exhausted thighs from shoving his prick forward, into his grip, into their prurient, taunting gazes. 

This time they gave him no hints at all. This time Lady Nian pushed Miss Jeyanna to her knees and drew up her own skirts, clearly revelling in his distress. Banks was licking his lordship's sated cock clean; he would be no help at all. Master Freddie was smirking, his friend still swirling his hand slowly over his own prick--not desperate, not aroused beyond belief, not concerned that anyone might keep him from his release in his own sweet time. 

"Please, your lordship," Liam thought he said, but perhaps his words were merely garbled cries. "Please let me--please!" 

Valbright stroked his butler's hair and looked at Liam with that perverse smile of his. "Such indecency," he said, his voice a low burr that went straight to Liam's aching balls. "Such vulgarity. I'd almost think you wanted something, but a fine pious scholar would appeal politely for whatever whim he wished satisfied. It can't be that." 

Oh, it was cruel, cruel. If he shut out the words, he might come just from the sound of Valbright's voice. Or the sweet, delicious slide of his own hand. Or the relentless stroking of the fat cock inside him, sparking pleasure as it invaded and claimed him. But the same heartless magic that held him bound and spread and fucked held him back, no matter how he strained and cried. 

And he had no more strength of will for silence. Pitiful, broken sounds spilled from his lips as he writhed. He nearly managed Valbright's name once, but "please" and "oh" and "it hurts, my lord" made nothing like the polite, pious request his master demanded of him. It was impossible. Surely they must all know it, these kings and queens of decadence! Surely his predicament must stir compassion in the hardest heart! 

"Someone ought to shut that whining up," Freddie groused. He, too, was touching himself, and Liam had no idea if such quick resurgence was natural in one who did not wear a sex collar. " _I'll_ do it, uncle."

His master had done up his own trouser buttons. "As much fun as it would be to see him suck you off..." He trailed off as he caught sight of Liam's horrified expression. "Mmm. I see your point. Why don't you give us all some peace and quiet, Frederic?"

"Nnnnnnnnn--" Liam caught himself nanoseconds before he could spill the full word. He did not _want_ Master Frederic's cock. Of all the things that had happened to him today, the incident in the courtyard had been the worst. It would haunt him, he knew, leave him waking in a sweat, heart pounding and prick shamefully hard, for months. But his lordship's threat rang in his ears. _Say no, and Banks will come before you do._

His master leaned forward. "What's that, boy? You have some saintly quibble with my gifts? Should I refuse what you've begged me for, after all?"

The choice was stark and savage. Suck Freddie's cock and come--or refuse and be left in torment. He had no doubt at all that they'd use all his holes eventually, whether he willed it or not. But to submit to this--

Valbright shot his cuffs and shrugged, as if it mattered little to him. "Your mouth now, or your ass later," he said. Freddie was standing, pumping himself to full hardness. Liam had only a moment to decide. 

Later meant a reprieve, for a while. Later meant that big cock that had dragged against his balls after he'd been whipped shoving itself into his well-fucked hole, while he begged for his own orgasm and was denied, over and over again. Later meant--

He broke. He begged them. He swore and cried and pleaded for Freddie's cock down his throat, for Bentham's cock in his ass, for his master's, for the cruelest grip of Banks's hands on his balls, to crawl, to be kept naked, to be whipped, if only they would let him come. 

"Please," he wept. He had sworn his body to the Lady along with his soul, and now he grovelled at the feet of the lords of dark magic, humping a construct made of their wicked will, offering himself to be their lowest plaything. 

Freddie's hand caught his jaw mid-plea, muffling a babbled promise to suck his lordship noon and night on the high steps of the Eillin Palace at the change of the guard. He heard himself, but he could not stop, and he was pathetically grateful when the young master's cock pushed its way past his trembling lips. He could not even try to prevent him, for even through his sobs he had not been able to stop touching himself. 

As Freddie's flesh settled on his tongue, and the scent of maleness filled his nostrils till he thought he would swoon from it, he felt the enchantment lift. His balls pulled up and his thighs went rigid with tension. The hungry, lustful thing in his belly gave a roar of triumph, and Freddie grabbed the back of his head, and the hard magic in his hole surged forward. He had one frantic moment to think _Not like this!_ And then Valbright's fingers were on his neck, and a flush of pure fire washed his body from collar to loins, and he was _coming_ , relief so wild and terrible he would have howled if Freddie's plunging shaft had left him any breath. 

He thought, as his vision went white and the young lord's prick cut off his air, that this might be dying. Every nerve was raw, his fist clenched so tight around his prick that his knuckles ached, and savage bliss rent him from the inside out. A boundless wave of euphoria akin to agony broke over his fear and despair and swept him away. 

Then the thud of his pulse in his ears faded to nothing and he toppled sideways out of the chair. He might have bashed his head against the ground, but the carpet was thick and his lordship's arms were strong. His master held Liam's quivering, naked body to his warm broad chest, and gently pried his fingers from their locked grip on his red, twitching cock. His voice thrummed through Liam, dark as black velvet. "You will keep those promises to me. Oh, every last one, my sweet, filthy, insatiable pet. Martyred on the point of your own lusts, oh yes. You will spend yourself dry, you will ache for abasement and bliss, you will whore yourself out on my word and thank me for it. No hypocrisy. No pretense to sainthood. Your masters knew what they were about when they sent you to me." 

The taste of his lordship's nephew's cock lay heavy on his tongue, and he lay naked but for his collar in the arms of this powerful, seductive magician, at the mercy of a remorseless enchantment that might at any moment rip his will from him and leave him a panting, begging wreck. He turned his face into Valbright's silver waistcoat and felt the hard rod of his lord's magic device still deep inside him. He was beyond shame, but he clung to this man who claimed the right to possess him simply because if he did not, he would melt away into nothing. 

Valbright smoothed his great warm hand down Liam's naked thigh, then with no effort at all spread Liam's legs so his clutch at his master's coat turned into a wanton sprawl. Even in this vulnerable moment, he might hide his face, but nothing else. His prick still stood half-proud from its nest of curls, and Valbright caressed it possessively. At the touch of his hand, some of the soreness slipped away, and it twitched as if it knew who owned it. 

"M-my lord." He did not think he could sit up, much less endure the further ravages of pleasure. "I don't think I can." 

Valbright chuckled into his hair. "Have you no mouth, my holy slut, no hands, no arsehole? No wits to learn to use them?" His voice held no bitterness, only knowing amusement, but Liam could feel himself flush from his chest to the roots of his hair. 

"I cannot speak for my wits," he said. 

His lord fed him brandy, and teased the head of his prick while he made Liam tell him what thoughts the maids' breasts and skirts inspired in him. He bent his head to use teeth and tongue on Liam's nipples, too, and made him suck his fingers, and scraped his nails down the insides of his thighs until he was once more moaning and begging to be used. 

And then he bound him to the brass horse. 

Liam had seen it in the courtyard but he had not understood. It was a frame where a man might be secured for display or punishment or fucking, and his lordship promised him all of them. He had Bentham, crooning things that made his cheeks flame while he spilled into Liam's throat. He had Frederic, robbed of his chance at Liam's mouth by his lordship's order, and made to kneel and suck his prick instead. He had his master balls-deep in his ass while the magic plug filled him too, for such things might be of this plane and another at once. His master murmured that he would teach him what that meant, and punish faulty memory. All he knew was that the last of his sanity fled him as he was stuffed full and fuller still, and he gasped around Lady Nian's carved blue cock and sucked as if his life depended on it. 

They had him each in turn, from the clever fingers and demanding cocks of his master's friends whose names he did not know, to Banks (his cock freed from his prim black suit, his face a mask of need as Liam's tongue darted along his shaft, his soft cry as Valbright pulled him back a moment before he would have spent), to the handle of Lady Nian's whip (shoved up his hole while Freddie's friend used his mouth and the lady's wicked fingers tormented his chest and balls). The maid in the gold collar rode his shaft, and he thought he felt her cunny as if it were his own when Valbright touched them both at once. It left him with such an ache that he felt to his knees after and buried his face between her thighs. 

He spent, and spent, and spent himself, now riding a wave of triumph, now shivering and trembling, now begging for freedom, now swearing on his soul for one more touch. When at last his master took him once again with his own cock, stroked his collar over and over and left his prick to jerk untouched, he came so hard and so long that he knew no more.


	5. The Lady

He woke in his own small bed under the soft quilt, clean and dry but naked. Moonlight spilled through the window, the golden-white of the first face of the Goddess. He sat up slowly, as in a trance, and held out his hands to bathe them in the light. 

_Liam._ The voice was like water on a parched day, like shelter in a storm, like the breasts of the great statue under her red, red silk. He did not hear it with so crude an instrument as his ears. _Liam Kedaran, born in Thalchu, child of my daughter Kareen._

His chest grew tight and his eyes pricked with tears. He had left those names behind before the Scholars. None but the Lady knew them now. 

Hands brushed his face, as gentle as the old steward who had patched his skinned knees too many times to count. Then she kissed him. He saw her, and did not, as if the light took the form of a woman, or another world bled into this. He knew now why the holy ones might write in rapture of her breasts, her lips, the touch of her hands, the strength of her thighs. 

"Lady," he said, in awe, and touched his lips with the fingers of his right hand, the first sign of worship he had ever known. He had always thought he would have so many things to ask her, but now he thought he might bask silent in the glory of her countenance and it would be far more than enough. At last he murmured, as if it might convey all the tangled pain and question of his life, _"Why?"_

_You are mine._

It was not an answer to the question he had asked--or not as he had meant it--but he curled forward on the bed and sobbed. "Lady," he gasped, the pain a vice around his heart, "I have done--what I have done--how can I still be yours?" 

She folded herself around him. _I do not let them go, that love me._

He found himself in her embrace, no longer on his face, but enfolded in her arms. She was strong and ancient, and her breasts were very beautiful. She touched him like a lover, and he felt the golden collar around his neck like a brand. 

"Lady," he said against her breasts, with her hands in his hair and the heat of her divinity burning against his thigh, "if I--if I have sworn--if I have another lord--oh, Lady--" 

She smiled and it pierced him like a sword, like sunlight, like the bliss of carnal release. _You are mine,_ she said, _You were mine first. Would you leave my service, Liam?_

He was hard--of course he was hard, but he had not noticed until she drew him inside her. "No," he said, and it seemed strange that he should say no to his Lady and to his lord on the same day. "No, Lady, I have loved...I have loved you truly. I would not leave you. Only..." 

_Only...the body,_ he thought, and he still had no words to tell what had happened to him, even to the Goddess. 

She laughed, bright as moonlight. _And what are we doing now?_

In the morning, he swam slowly up to wakefulness to find his hand around his cock and his hips arching upward, and he did not stop himself from taking the pleasure his body desired. He did not know why; he should have been afraid to break the vows he had made so many years ago, or of his master's reckless power, but instead he climbed out of bed and looked himself over in the mirror, and only blushed a little at his own nakedness. 

There was another suit laid out for him, and he washed in the basin in his tiny water closet and put it on. He had dreamed something, but it drifted away from him when he tried to make it solid in his mind. He sat on one of his two chairs to pull on his shoes, and winced. A muddled memory came flooding back: a leather paddle stinging across his ass, driving his prick forward into someone's fundament with each stroke. Freddie, he thought, but who had held the paddle? Not his lordship, who had watched the whole affair with a rather satisfied smile. 

There was a tray with fruit and honeyed bread and sausages, and he ate hungrily, then followed the note that came with it to the room in which Lady Nyna took her lessons. _I am the Lady's._ The thought brushed through his mind as he hunted for the schoolroom. He didn't know where it came from, but it seemed to settle in his bones like the fact of gravity or the beat of his heart. _The Lady's, the Lady's, the Lady's._

His good mood lasted until he stepped into the classroom to find the Lady Nyna waiting for him. After Frederic, he had had no idea what to expect from his other charge. (Would he even be expected to tutor Frederic in academic matters now? He did hope not.) She was not, as he had first assumed, a child of ten in a flower-print tunic, or whatever it was that aristocratic girl-children wore. But she was not some fierce virago either, and she did not pounce upon him the instant he opened the door, like Frederic had. 

What she was, was a girl of perhaps eighteen, a paler blonde than Freddie, delicate-featured and clad in a dress that he supposed must not be considered indecent (certainly, compared to the near-naked maids last night it was practically sedate) but that hugged her waist and put quite a lot of her bosoms on display. She was perched on a desk, swinging her legs, but hopped off it with a smile when he entered. 

What on earth was he supposed to do with her? 

He claimed a larger desk, cleared his throat, and began at the beginning. He had collected information about her age, year of studies, favoured subjects, and areas she felt less confident in, and was asking a few questions about her grasp of geography when she looked up at him and said, "Freddie says you have a nice cock." 

He choked. He knew he went bright red. "I--I hardly think that is appropriate, Lady Nyna--" 

She slumped forward on the desk, leaning on her elbows. It brought her enticing cleavage into even more prominence. He tore his gaze back to her face and saw her lips curve into a smug smile. "You should take it out and show it to me. It's too bad I had to miss dinner last night." She sighed. "Mama needed me." 

Were they still calling it "dinner"? Not "the orgy"? Not "strip the tutor"? Not "fuck him six ways from Sunday"? 

He shuddered to think what portrayal of events she might have gotten from Freddie. "That's very dutiful of you. Now, how much had your last tutor covered on the disputed lands between Zarith and Hilgarra?" 

Nyna sniffed. "She didn't even have any good games." She eyed the half of him that she could see as he sat behind the desk. Steel crept into her countenance. "Take it out and show me, or I'll tell my guardian you tried to force me to do...things." 

"Things?" He swallowed, images of the _things_ that he'd been forced to do crowding into his mind. He thanked the Lady that these trousers were not as tight as those at dinner, but he could feel the thrust of Valbright's cock inside him, and he was _almost_ sure it was only a memory. 

She shrugged. "Oh, you know. Things a nice girl wouldn't let her tutor do to her. Like get up and come over here and show her his cock. Get it nice and hard. Touch it right there where she could see." 

Was this the sort of thing his lordship had meant by _eat you for breakfast?_ Liam coughed. "If you please, Lady Nyna, the--" 

"Which you will," she said. "Freddie says you gave them a nice show last night. Says you've got a really dirty mouth too, for all you look so...guileless." 

_Strip the tutor, make him beg, mock his naivité._

She glanced toward the bell-pull by the door. It was closer to her desk than his. "I'll ring for help. Lord Valbright will be here in minutes. What do you think he'd do to you if you hurt me?" 

Murder, he thought, might be the least of it. He knew the blood had drained from his face because Lady Nyna looked triumphant. 

"Get up." 

Swallowing heavily, he pushed himself to his feet. There ought to be a hole in the floor that would swallow him up. Couldn't magic do that?

"Oh, that's nice. Davies didn't wear that suit half so well. And you _are_ a bit hard already. I thought so." 

She looked so innocent. If she'd been black-eyed and stunning like Lady Nian, or wearing nothing but scarves like Jeyanna, at least he could have braced himself. "What--" 

"I said come here. Now. And put your hands behind you as you walk. Arch your hips a bit. Yeah, like that. Now stop." He was right beside her desk, and she leaned over and ran her fingertips up the hard line of his cock. He flinched, but he was not so used to such caresses that he was unaffected. 

"Lady Nyna--" A pretty smile, a click of her fingers, and he was straining like he hadn't just been milked hours ago. What was wrong with him?

"Hush. Take it out, please. And tell me if you _did_ fuck Freddie, the pompous prick. He won't say." She pouted at him. 

His hands shook a little on his trouser fronts. His stiffening cock looked vulgar and misplaced, next to his neat waistcoat and her fine dress. He shoved his hands behind his back again immediately, tempted to close his eyes as if that would make this all go away. 

Her fingers on his prick made him jump. "Well, did you?" 

"I--I--" His voice rose in pitch and he flushed even harder. "He--" 

"He says he put his prick up _you_." She was trailing her fingertip around the crown of his hard cock, like he was a favourite toy to fiddle with. 

"He did not!" His own vehemence startled him. But why shouldn't it? Freddie _hadn't_ fucked him and he hoped he never would. 

"Well." She dimpled at him and leaned on the desk again. "Put your hand on your cock and moan for me, and tell me all about it." 

Heart thudding painfully, he did as she said. He bit his lip against the first rush of pleasure, but he couldn't stop his eyes from closing as he swept his hand up his shaft. Slowly. No rush. Try to think of a way out of this--but oh, _Lady_ , it felt good. Think--think of geography. No, that was ruined. Mathematics. Instead, his inner eye cast up a vision of her laughing face as part of the crowd last night, _Moan for me, jerk it faster, look, he doesn't even know how to touch himself!_

"What," said Lord Valbright in a voice of thunder, "is going on here?" 

Liam's eyes flew open in shock. Leaning in the doorway, arms crossed over his chest and eyes narrowed, stood the master of the house. He did not look as though he found the sight of Liam touching himself for Lady Nyna amusing. "Y-your lordship!" 

Valbright's teeth bared in a false smile. "Get your hand off your cock and come here. No, I didn't say try to cover yourself. Get your hand. Off your cock." He raised two fingers in what Liam now knew for a magical gesture, and a cuff of gold just like the collar clamped about the base of Liam's bobbing erection. A chain led from the cuff back to Valbright's hand. He gave a sharp jerk and Liam stumbled forward. 

"Nyna," Valbright said over Liam's shoulder, "I know Alessia's wound you up, but don't play with the tutor before lunch, would you? You _will_ complete your studies." 

And without waiting for an answer, he stalked out the door. Liam stumbled after him, holding up his trousers as best he could, his hard cock thrust out in front of him as his master strode down the balcony almost too fast for him to keep up. In the cold light of morning, it was far more humiliating than his exposure in the close, heightened atmosphere of the orgy last night. Or maybe sleep had let the memory fade. 

Valbright started down the stairs by the front door, and did not bother to slacken the chain. Liam grabbed the bannister to keep from tumbling end over end as his prick was tugged uncomfortably forward. Staff moved in the great hall as they descended one wing of the staircase, crossed in front of the open door, and began to climb the stairs towards Valbright's office. 

"I should do it after all," his master growled. "Keep you naked. Maybe a nice, hard cock up your ass all the time, to teach you your place. Then it wouldn't be a _novelty_ anymore. You wouldn't have to expose yourself to all and sundry the instant my back was turned." 

"Your lor--" Liam struggled to the top of the staircase, his protest faltering under the vivid, distressingly alluring images Valbright painted. 

The door to Valbright's study slammed open. His master didn't even bother to close it before he was shoving Liam to his knees. "They warned me about you. Said you'd take to it all far too quickly. And _he_ was right, damn the hypocritical bastard." His hot, huge prick was pushing past Liam's lips before he could wonder who in the nine torments his master meant, who could possibly have known he would find himself in this position. 

He was back where he'd started. On his knees in Valbright's sanctum, being manhandled and talked dirty to, only this time it wasn't his pleasure his lordship sought. He might come, if it pleased his lord, but this, this was the same man who'd choked him, who'd made him beg for what he hated, who took an innocent and exposed him to strangers. 

And made him love it. _Don't lie to me,_ his master had said. The truth burning in Liam's blood, in the heat in his face and the hardness of his cock and the eager way he sucked, was that his soul, and a little of his body, belonged to the Lady. And his body, and perhaps a little of his soul, belonged to Valbright. Virtue, steadfastness, mercy--and filthy, wanton, breathless craving to be forced and bound and put on display. And fucked. 

It was going to be quite an education.


	6. Epilogue

Five months to the day after Liam had left the Scholars for the house of Lord Nathaniel Valbright, his lordship's carriage pulled up at the gates of the academy-monastery and a thin young man in gloves, top hat, and a sober navy suit stepped down. He passed the gates with a smile and nod for the sleepy warden, who waved him through as an old face returning home.

Once inside the doors of the scholars' hall, Liam's manner changed abruptly. He glanced right and left, and, finding no one about, pulled himself up and moved decisively down the hall. 

The door to Brother Vestallan's office banged open and he started up from his work. He stared at the stranger in the doorway, then sank back into his chair as he recognized his old student. 

"Ah, Liam," he said, pushing back from his desk with a benevolent smile. "How are you? I hope they're treating you well?" 

The young man stalked across the room and leaned over the desk. "Have you done this to other acolytes?" It came out in a rush, and he gripped the edge of the desk far too hard to be comfortable. 

Vestallan's face paled, but he pulled another schedule to him and began marking entries. "I don't know what you mean, Liam. Done what?"

"Have you," Liam bit out, " _sold_ others besides me to lords with loose morals? Picked out a pretty boy when some dissolute bastard calls for a tutor or a secretary--oh, this one, you'll like him. He stiffens under the lash. He prays so much he must secretly _crave_ to be fucked."

The last word snapped loudly in the spare, frugal room with its benign abstract images of the Goddess and its grey-frocked priest. 

"Now, Liam," Vestallan began. His hand began to tremble and he set his pen aside. 

"You looked at me and knew you couldn't have me. Not and keep your position here. So you plotted and you schemed, and you gave me into the hands of someone you knew _would_ take me in all the filthy ways you wouldn't allow yourself." He drew a harsh breath. "Maybe you thought Valbright would bend to blackmail--that he'd let you use me once or twice, or watch me, if you promised to keep his secret. Hah!" 

Vestallan jumped. He made as if to slip out from behind the desk, but Liam barred his way. "Is it the caning that gets you going? Or the scholars at exercise?" He came round the end of the desk and shoved Vestallan back against his chair with a hand on his chest. The chair skidded back with the force of it. "As a matter of fact, I don't care which it is." 

"I only--not when they're young," Vestallan quavered. "And I only look." 

"You only look." Liam mocked him. He was leaning very close now, and then he dropped to his knees. There was room between the desk and the chair, space enough for a grown man to lift another's skirts and yank them above his waist, where his cock strained imprudently between quivering thighs. Liam looked up at him with a smile full of teeth. "I'm very good at this. Valbright _likes_ me, you know. I've had practice. He finds it very pleasant to give my mouth to his special favourites. Or let some partner in business grope me as a perquisite." His left hand closed around Vestallan's balls, and he wasn't quite as careful as he might have been. 

"Don't--please--" The old priest's prick was dripping, the fat head purple with lust, and his eyes were fixed on Liam's mouth as if magnetized.

"I hope," Liam growled, "that you think of all those things, every time you confess your sins to His Reverence. I hope you think of my mouth, and his lordship's cock inside me, and how very _much_ my master pleases me." His right hand began to move on the priest's cock, and the man moaned. "And you will confess. Every sin. Every one of us you sent away, and to whom, and why. And what you did to us, in the filthy, hypocritical corners of your twisted mind." It was fast and uncomfortable and the priest was shuddering on the verge of release already. "And I hope you _choke_ on it." 

Liam lowered his head. He fit his pretty lips around Vestallan's cock and he sucked with all the expertise five months in a house of sin had given him. Vestallan came, wheezing, and the hand on his balls bore down. He howled. 

The young man rose to his feet, towering over him where he lay in his own come, sacred robes hitched up over his limp cock. 

"Goodbye," he said. 

Back in the carriage, Liam dropped onto the seat beside Valbright and let out a long, pent-up breath. 

"It's done?" Valbright looked up from his book. His eyes were dark and hungry, the way they always were when he knew some other had just had his favourite pet. 

"Yes, my lord." Liam swallowed hard. "I've left your evidence for the abbot to find. He won't...he won't do this again." 

"Pity," Valbright said, but by now Liam knew his moods. He'd disliked Brother Vestallan too, as much for his hypocrisy and weak attempts at blackmail as anything. "I had hopes of having him on the brass horse someday. Let Freddie have him, before I threw the old bastard out naked into the street." 

The horses began to move, and Liam sighed. "Well, it's done." 

Valbright set aside his book. "Come here, holy Liam." 

His hands in Liam's hair were harsher than Vestallan's would have been, and the thrust of his cock, later, more violent. But Liam had found his place, and his master suited him as neatly as the golden collar around his neck.


End file.
